RKA Writing
Nostalgia - Writing down the memories The following extracts are from my blog which is called Rosalind Adam is Writing in the Rain where you can find these and many more posts on topics ranging from nostalgia to writing to observations on life.I often write about memories in my blog. I'm afraid that I'm a bit obsessed with nostalgia. I've included the link to the original article in the title of each extract in case you want to read the whole thing or if you'd like to add a comment to the original blog posting. I love receiving comments!
[There are two blog extracts below which are both called 'Do you remember when...' The first 'Do you remember when...' extract is from 2009 and the second one is from 2010.]
I don't know if this is the same for everyone but it's never the important life-changing events that I remember. It’s the small insignificant ones like going into the sweet shop across the road from my Grandma’s house and buying one fruit chew for a farthing. That was in the pre-decimal days, of course, when there were four farthings to a penny and twelve pennies to a shilling, which is now a 5ppiece. I could have bought 48 chews with a shilling. I wonder what you can buy for 5p today.
Food! Now that’s guaranteed to send me on a nostalgia trip. Remember the sweets that we had as children? (Unless you’re considerably younger than me in which case the following is a social history lesson.) Gobstoppers that changed colour as you sucked and would contravene health and safety these days, rainbow coloured sherbet served in a piece of paper twisted at the bottom to make a bag and licked from a grubby finger, chewy white sweet cigarettes with red dye on the tips. Imagine giving those to children today. I used to practise inhaling and blowing pretend smoke rings into the air.
Today's television is as stale as a mince pie on New Year's Day but it wasn't always like that. In the 1950s and 60s television programmes were cutting edge and fresh with such offerings as:
Even Soaps were better in 'the olden days'. Today's Soaps are either far-fetched, harrowing or both. When Soaps were first shown they were warm and entertaining with just a touch of reality. Some programmes were iconic. They were ingenious examples of scriptwriting which we can now recite almost in their entirety because we've seen each episode of each series so many times. These include:
And as for Children's Television, I just loved Muffin the Mule, Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben, The Woodentops (remember Spot the Dog?), Rag, Tag and Bobtail. Programmes were really something in those days!
This blog is about a conversation which took place in a queue at the local Post Office:-
The queue was barely moving. An occasional shuffle was a highlight. Someone started chatting.
‘Did you know that exactly 100 years ago they built the first ever cinema in Leicester,’ said Chatty Lady. I didn’t know, but it made me remember that, when I was young, there used to be a cinema on the corner of our street. The Evington it was called. It had a grand facade outside and grubby, velvet seats inside but it was our ‘local’, a cheap, enjoyable night out with no parking problems or crowds to push through. It’s a care home now. I hate changes.
‘And what’s more,’ continued Chatty Lady. ‘In 1913 they built the De Montfort Hall.’ Now we were talking real nostalgia. All the live concert tours visited Leicester’s De Montfort Hall in the 1960s. I was a regular. I’ve sat within touching distance of Mick Jagger, Billy J. Kramer, Gene Pitney, Gerry and the Pacemakers, even the Beatles.
I queued all night to get a ticket to see the Beatles. Mum thought I was staying with a friend. Her Mum thought she was staying with me. We sang Beatles songs and chanted their names into the darkness – oh for the energy of youth. At dawn a huge plate glass window smashed under our combined weight but we stuck it out and got our prized tickets. I was on the front row of the balcony for that concert. I screamed. I cried. I almost passed out in the interval. It was the best concert I’ve ever been to.
Chatty Lady confided that she still goes to the ‘De Mont’ to see many of those same artists and I confessed that I do too. Their tours now bear names like The Silver Sixties. The music has come down in pitch and to be honest the stars aren’t quite so... well... sexy as they once were. But then I can’t get up and dance like I used to and waving my arms in the air hurts. I hate changes.
What I remember about our summer holiday in 1956:-
We were, as you’ve no doubt guessed, at Butlins in Skegness. It was the first ever holiday camp in the UK. It had been built in 1936 but because of the 2nd World War, it didn’t really get going as a holiday camp until the 1950s. The ethos was one of organised holiday fun... at least it was meant to be fun but the expression on my face in that picture on the right makes you wonder.
Mum and Dad bought a caravan before the 1950s were out. It was a static one on a site in Ingoldmells. This was only minutes away from Skegness Butlins so very little changed. Our caravan had few amenities. We had to go on a short walk to a standpipe to get water and a longer walk to a toilet block for ‘comfort breaks’. I used to take myself to the toilet block in the middle of the night armed with only a torch and dressing gown. You wouldn’t let kids do that these days. Has it become more dangerous or are we more aware... or more paranoid?
Rosalind Kathryn Adam
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