Confessions of a Nostalgia Junky

What makes you feel nostalgic?

They say that nostalgia is good but it’s not what it used to be.

I’m a total nostalgia junky, I need no excuse to feel nostalgic, I simply can’t help myself.

On paper, the world is immeasurably better than it was. Most things are more reliable and readily available. But that just makes it bland. There is so little hardship now, that the little treats have no real purpose.

I was thinking just the other day about the frequent power cuts in the Seventies. I was very little at the time but remember the lights going out and the candles being lit. We would peer out the window and see the street lights were off, and our neighbors movements about their homes traced by the flickering shadows.

We would have toast made on the hot coals of the living room fire, drenched in real salty butter. And then be sent to bed with a candle to light the way. Toast was never so good in the toaster. Times were harsh but they gave us memories all the more cherishable for it.

The home of my childhood was torn down in the 2000s and replaced with affordable housing. The fields I played, are now affordable housing. My secondary school closed many years ago, even my college buildings have gone, Victorian blocks now towers of glass and steel. The market stalls are gone. Even the draughty old bus station, with its diesel fumes and greasy spoons, is gone.

Most of my childhood is now memory or museum pieces.

My very first train set, was this High Speed Train. My first trip to London was on one of these. I felt like I’d been born in the future.

We were the first on the street to get a video recorder. We could set the timer and record Coronation Street and Emmerdale Farm while we were on day trips to London. It really was the future.

The ZX Spectrum. A golden age video games.

The best toys were the Transformers. My first one was a Gobot, I still think about the hours spent playing with these, on my own, and with friends.

All of these pictures were taken in museums, Barnsley, and York. It’s quite sobering seeing our ‘now’ being preserved for posterity. We can no more stop the march of time than we can tell the tide to halt, but it’s fun to look back in simpler times.