Reverse Nostalgia

Being a colossal nostalgia junky as I am, I am well aware of the nuance behind expression, Nostalgia is a funny thing.

Most of us at some time or another fall in to the trap of wondering if I knew then what I know now, there are songs about such times. I have certainly not been immune to wondering what might have been if I’d paid more attention in school, spent less time in the pub, and dare I say it, found God sooner. Who knows where I could have been by now, I might have even joined the priesthood.

Maybe not.

A lot of these reveries are caused by us being unprepared for something we like to think that we should have seen coming, like buying property when it was £5 a dozen. Or buying bitcoin. Or simply spending more time in the moment with friends and family.

I hadn’t indulged my favourite reveries for quite some time, but it was on the way home from a family trip to visit my parents in Yorkshire where a somewhat emotional nerve had been touched, and my mind went back about thirty years.

I was driving the same road, in my mind, on a trip that was never taken back in 1994, with friends I never had, and a car I’d never owned.

It was a long wheel base land rover, I’d somehow obtained in my late teens, in the daydream, and had customised it somewhat. And now my friends, presumably from the job I didn’t have, or the college I never attended, were on our way home from a smashing weekend event of camping and sunshine, and beer tents, and probably a bit of kayaking. There was probably a dog there for good measure, a bonkers dog that made everyone laugh with its endearing antics.

I don’t like kayaking, or camping, but we must have had an awesome time of it all, seizing the day, carpe diem, and all that. Or something.

My train of thought was interrupted by one of the kids in the back.

“Dad?” He said.

“Yes” I replied.

“Can I have more mobile data?”

“No, but you can tether to mine…”

And so it went. But that little intrusion of modernity lingered in my daydream.

Back in 1994, the Landy was struggling with the hill that I was currently powering up in the present day. In 1994, the air conditioning wasn’t on, it wasn’t there to be on. There was no mobile data to tether to. And the big bright-comes-as-standard-sat-nav screen was absent. So too was the Why Files Podcast that I was half listening to, on Spotify, on my phone, played on the car speakers via Bluetooth.

It suddenly became the most absurd thing. Probably worthy of a short story. But there I was immersed in my daydream about seizing the Golden Years in some idealised past, on an adventure with the bestest of friends, and I was getting grumpy about the air conditioning, I was missing my modern comforts, in a daydream.

This being a fantasy, the air conditioning was no problem. All that was needed was that electronics night course that was bound to have been running at the village hall last year, 1993. That would have given me all of the technical competency needed to ensure that my fantasy Landy had air conditioning just in time for this legendary road trip with pals in 1994.

The next problem was a little more difficult to fix. That Why Files Podcast. We’re talking ancient civilisations. No mobile phone. No mobile data. No Spotify. No Bluetooth. Not even any Why Files.

Ok. So we are just listening to something else, problem solved. Maybe Graeme Hancock’s Chariot of the Gods, on audio cassette. Not out for another two years. hardback, not cassette. Ok. What about Von Daniken? He did mysterious stuff like that? Maybe we just sang along to Bohemian Rhapsody on repeat, moshing, all the way home. That was the thing to do in those days, as I recall. Did cassette players have a repeat button?

The sat nav pinged, again, interrupting my daydream. I wasn’t using it, I know the way quite well, but it invaded my daydream nonetheless. And I recall making an audible grumble about it, though no one seemed to pick up on it.

I am an amateur cartographer, low level, and I know my way round a map, but I always go wrong around Teeside, and the satnav comes in handy. Satnav has proved more useful than I like to admit. Would I really prefer to be back in 1994?

I started to think about all the other little things. Heated seats. Heated steering wheel. Powered steering. Assisted brakes, hands free set, keyless ignition…

For years, I’d dipped in to this cute little fantasy whenever things weren’t going my way. For years, when our house was too small for example, and it was impossible to upsize, the solution was in the past, back when a four bedroom house with a drive and a south facing garden cost about £60k. All I needed to do was find a way to buy a house in 1994 and all of my housing issues in the twenty tens would have been solved. Simple.

The same was with work. Needed a new job, if only I could change my skill set in the past to make me career ready in the now. Stoopid really, but I know I’m not the only that does this, so we can have a bit of a laugh about it now I suppose.

Then we passed another milestone on the way home, 1994 and present day. Some such castle, can never remember its name, it hasn’t changed at all in thirty years, only the cars are different, but it reminds me that its time to leave the A66 and head towards Shap. We’re more than half way home and this daydream just isn’t cutting like it used to. Lets try and unpick this a bit. Where have we been in 1994?

1994, young, full of life, we must have been kayaking, probably on some white water river in the North Yorkshire Moors.

I’m not picturing it. North Yorkshire isn’t like Colorado, and there was definitely a beer tent. Beer tents and kayaking don’t go together, as I understand it, and that goes a long way toward explaining my dislike of kayaking.

Who’s in the car? Lets break that down a bit too. I didn’t have many mates in 1994. After school, we all kind of went our own ways, and thats fine. School brings people together, briefly, artificially binding many divergent paths, and thats totally fine. We’re too early, in 1994 for uni mates, so I suppose I have absolute license to design a friendship group of my own liking.

Drawing a blank here. I enjoy my own company too much. Maybe throw in a couple of age adjusted Felicity Kendals in there and a Phillipa Foresta though. That would be awesome, in its own way, except we are entering designs of fornication territory, and thats a sin that thankfully Jesus, in his wisdom, saved me from long long ago. No need to be worrying about that well dodged bullet now is there. Good times.

Daydreaming used to be easy, fun, escapism. But now I’m daydreaming about driving a car with none of the modern features, no air conditioning, no power steering, struggling up hills, and being unhappy about it, on the way back from a place I can’t remember, with people that I can’t picture.

What about the dog? I can almost smell it, soggy, hairy, panting heavily in my ear, breath like a rotting whale carcass, as it tries to put its face out through my open window from behind my seat. I love dogs, seriously I do, I’m just not very good with them. This perfect weekend day dream seems to involve a lot of picking up and bagging of dog mess to be disposed of sensibly. I’m not picturing it.

So what are we evening talking about here? My day dreams were usually preambles to current problems solved in the past. Mostly about housing. Housing was a huge issue. But thats sorted now, to some extent.

I’m day dreaming about driving along the road I’m actually driving already, but I am daydreaming about missing the car I am actually driving. So why don’t I just think about the journey? It’s a beautiful day after all. The sun is shining but not too bright, maginificent massive white clouds fill the distant sky.

Lets take the time to fine tune this moment. We’re heading back, not from kayaking, but a beer tent. Where has a beer tent up North Yorkshire? The North Yorkshire Moors Railway. But we’ve done that loads, and every time was great. Lets imagine that trip was more meaningful instead.

So, who is in the car again? Meaningful people. So that’ll be the kids and the wife. And where is meaningful that we might be making such a journey? Visiting Mam and Dad.

I swear to God I am dense some times.