Childhood memories (ruined)

[Intercity]

Just wondering how many of you looked back on childhood memories and then revisited those places just to find out they weren't how you remembered them?

For me it was the big steep hill that we used to ride our bikes down (and walk them back to the top because it was so steep), went back and saw the said steep hill just to find out it wasn't that scary.

Or the heavily wooded forest we used to build forts in, just to find out it was a small cluster of trees that was little more than bushes.

Even places in the market that when we went back are now a supermarket.

The maze of alleyways that we used to run to lose chasing adults, turned out to be a few small cut through.

All the things we used to think were big, scary or just cool really disappointed when we went back and saw them as adults.

Anyone else got ruined memories to share?

[Newportnobby]

Sadly when you reach a certain age everything has changed. I remember a wonderful station at Wolverton in Buckinghamshire with lovely waiting rooms/buffet/real fires but now it's just bus shelters on platforms. All the termini in London I visited (and that was virtually all of them) have been altered almost beyond recognition, many of the loco sheds I used to frequent have been buried under supermarkets and a lot of footpaths have just disappeared. I realise I can't live in the past but the present and the future holds very little interest so, yes, my memories are very precious and it probably accounts for why I have so many DVDs of steam and early diesel days.

[NeMo]

It's easy to fall into this frame of mine. Some folks say "you should never go back" because the reality won't ever match the memory.

Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes you recall things that make you shudder with embarrassment. But I prefer to look at memories like this: even if the reality wasn't all that special, the fact is that the experience helped you grow into who you are.

Think about one of your first modelmaking experiments. At the time, you were proud. In hindsight, the paint-job was probably terrible or the gluing haphazard. Whatever. But the point was that that experience helped you develop a skill or get over a fear of trying something new.

That maze of alleys that was really just a cut-through? Sure, not much to an adult, but at the time it helped you develop a sense of adventure and gave you a desire for physical exploration you hopefully carry to the present day.

What's dangerous about looking wistfully into the past is that you can get stuck there. The present is all you have, and this world, right now, is the only one you get to play in. And, as the Desiderata has it, "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world."

Cheers, NeMo

[broadsword]

As someone said, the past is a foreign country!  I don't have much nostalgia
apart from music, but I recall filthy trains and filthy pubs and my granny's
home cooking. You'd get better grub in a POW camp.

[Newportnobby]

but I recall my granny's home cooking. You'd get better grub in a POW camp.

[snitchthebudgie]

It scares me that they'll bringing out 50th anniversary copies of my favourite albums, and that I could buy a home on the local retirement estate - and be listening to Jimi Hendrix......   

[Newportnobby]

I could buy a home on the local retirement estate - and be listening to Jimi Hendrix......   

...... and force your neighbours to listen as well

[austinbob]

I've been back to places I used to live, places I went trainspotting etc. Almost without exception things have changed, for better or worse, but rarely do you see what you remembered and that leaves you feeling cheated. Old memories can be refreshed by letters, photos, emails etc. of the time.
Best to cherish your old memories and make new ones I think.

[snitchthebudgie]

...... and force your neighbours to listen as well

Not THAT loud - but they can always turn their hearing aids off. 

[silly moo]

I remember going to Hamleys at Christmastime when I was small and being completely thrilled by the fact that they had toys on every floor and a circular model railway that went around one of them.

I was bought a miniature teddy bear which I lost in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas crowds.

They might have had a floor just for model railways. When I went back as as an adult the building seemed so small and the toys garish and plastiky.

[daffy]

Promoted by a childhood friend who sent me a few of his memories of secondary school days in the 1960's and '70's, I recently wrote a lengthy memoir of my own days at the school we shared.
It was a good cathartic exercise, a chance to look at decisions taken or not taken, and for me at least a reasoning and a reckoning of those years that I have often looked back at in small vignettes with little pleasure.
The exercise over, I now put them firmly in the past. Though I could wish for some things to be different, that is a fatuous exercise and serves no purpose. In effect I have carried out a 'brain dump', or cleaned my hard drive of harmful clutter. It's all still saved, but no longer pops up unannounced.

But I do agree that physical locations prove, with age, to shrink and become quite benign. One steep hill I recently drove down holds memories of my first exciting 50mph bicycle ride - quite how the mileometer on the handlebars managed to record that figure on such a gentle slope is now beyond comprehension. And a nearby farmer's field was the scene of a disastrous winter sledging escapade where I was catapulted over the heads of others as our 'sledge train' disintegrated over an enormous bump at high speed. Walking up that easy slope a few years ago I was unable to detect any sign of an 'enormous bump', even though little had changed. Just me.

But the visiting of places held dear in my memory from those far off childhood days is likely a sad and unsatisfactory pursuit, for in many instances the places where I used to play, the lanes, the fields, the spinneys, the babbling brooks we damned and paddled in, the trees we climbed, the corn fields in which we built hay-bale 'camps', the old farm houses and barns that were assisted in their decay; Most have been lost to housing estates, roads and enormous complexes of 'out of town' superstores and warehouses and their attendant massive car-parks. And those that remain are deserted and unfrequented, eschewed by youth today it seems in favour of a virtual reality.

Of these places and events in my childhood the memories are the more precious, memories of a gentler, less frantic and frenetic world (or so it seemed at the time). These I will cherish forever, and in the meantime I shall continue as I always have, building new ones until I too become a memory.

[Dorsetmike]

I've lived in the same area most of my life except when I was in the RAF, even then I'd be "home" 2 or 3 times a year, so although there have been many changes, they've seemed gradual and thus less noticeable, usually there is sufficient of the surrounding areas remaining to be able to recall what had been there.

[daffy]

A.E.Houseman's words just came to mind apropos this subject:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

[Steve Brassett]

I knew I was getting old when I first heard the Sex Pistols on Radio 2!

Still, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

[Bealman]

As many members will recall, I spent some time in my home town in 2014 (Bealman's spur of the moment UK adventure thread), and while some things remained the same, other things were disappointing.

And yes, I stayed in an old folks home there which reminded me of the Hotel California!