I have been
on a bit of a nostalgia trip just recently. I put it down to a number of
things: my age, early fifties, time on my hands due to medical redundancy and a
lack of good entertainment around.
I was
sharing a melancholy moment with my wife. We were having one of those
conversations that marks your progression to a new way of looking at life:
looking back. It certainly seems that the older one gets the more one will look
back to times gone by. It is part of accepting that the bulk of your life has
been led and you are approaching the last stretch on the journey of life. My
wife and I were watching punk Britannia at the time. We discussed what we were
like in those days, the places that we went to, the gigs, the post punk indie
scene and the simplicity of things then in comparison to now. Just like the
hippies in the generation before us we thought that our generation would change
the world: then again when you are in your late teens you still have a lot to
learn about how things are done. Living brings experience and knowledge and
your young dreams are dashed.
Like a lot
of married couples we only get time together at the weekends. As we
don’t go out much we usually sit together and watch any programmes that we have
recorded during the week, or go on Netflix or an online streaming media site or
You-tube. The summer never seems to be a good time for TV scheduling so we have
been watching You-tube a lot. We started to look for things that we enjoyed in
the past, such as Thriller from the 1970s, The Prisoner, Red Dwarf and such. It
is when you watch these again years after the first time that you realise how
quickly things have changed in the world around us.
We both
recalled when watching thriller that we were both in our early teens and it was
a treat to get to stay up to watch it. Perhaps that is why we have both held
fond memories of it all our lives. The first thing that you notice now when you
watch it is how low- tech the 1970s were. We were amused by the casting of
thriller, which always had an American star (to boost US sales no doubt) and
was awash with middle class accents. Actually it is more accurate to say RADA
accents.
The houses were always enormous and the plots generally featured a character,
often but not always a young woman that was being driven insane by someone else
who wanted revenge or an inheritance or to control a business. I must stress I
am not putting the programme down because it has so much charm and innocence that
is not in many programmes today. There was no profanity or abusive language,
although the 1970s attitude towards women was still fairly Neanderthal. We then
thought that it would be fun to look at some of the childrens programmes that
we grew up with, and fun it most definitely was! We watched episodes of the
Banana Splits, Timeslip, Worzel Gummidge, Catweazle and have saved many others
in to our favourites for future weekends.
It is strange
looking back, not just at the entertainment but the news, technology, fashions
and attitudes and also glimpsing a life that had enough “mod cons” to make life
comfortable but was not overwhelmed with technology and machinery as life is
today, sometimes to the point of claustrophobia. We need to leave space in our
lives to fill with being human, interpersonal, and driven by something more
than personal gratification. Looking back can reminds me of happy, carefree
days when I had no responsibilities and was safe pretty much wherever I went. I
have to admit, I wouldn’t want to be a kid growing up nowadays.
How the
world has changed, particularly for children. Even their entertainment is more
adult than it should be and sex and image and dreaming of stardom are pushed at
them. Gone are the days of programmes that would provide a set of moral values.
Crime and criminals are made to look cool instead of being vilified and made to
pay for their actions. Parents are no longer portrayed as being caring and
protecting, more and more often parents are shown to be either a waste of space
(ie a drunk or a junkie) or not caring or out of touch and even abusive. Is
this how it really is?
Having said
that I have to follow that by saying “God bless the Internet” and services like
You-tube that can take us on a trip down memory lane and relieve us of the
stress of modern living. When I look back I don’t do so with a sense of loss or
regret, it doesn’t make me sad: it fills me with a warm glow of contentment
because my past is a place that I can visit and relive the feelings associated
with the programme, the era and my experiences then and bring them in to the
present to savour. I also see my role as a parent to provide love and
protection and education. It is up to those of us that grew up with a set of
values and a moral compass to lead the way forward for the next generation by
ensuring that what we had will not be completely lost.
It is said
that the past is a foreign country, but really it is a databank of memories,
feelings, associations and lessons learned. The past should not be forgotten:
it has a role to play in the present and the future.
