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?
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.
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
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.
Quote from: broadsword on September 04, 2017, 03:46:07 PM
but I recall my granny's home cooking. You'd get better grub in a POW camp.
:laughabovepost: :laugh:
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...... :doh:
Quote from: snitchthebudgie on September 04, 2017, 04:16:42 PM
I could buy a home on the local retirement estate - and be listening to Jimi Hendrix...... :doh:
...... and force your neighbours to listen as well >:D
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.
:hmmm: :beers:
Quote from: newportnobby on September 04, 2017, 04:25:22 PM
...... and force your neighbours to listen as well >:D
Not THAT loud - but they can always turn their hearing aids off. :angel:
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.
:NGaugersRule:
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.
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.
A.E.Houseman's words just came to mind apropos this subject:
QuoteInto 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.
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.
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!
As a complete opposite to some of the previous comments. I used to ride my bike around ships' moorings on the Manchester ship canal (fenced on only the landward side and a drop straight into 30-odd feet of filthy water with almost vertical banks on the other) and down the slopes of a local hill (the grassed over remains of a huge mound of ash from a redundant power station). When visiting them a couple of years ago, I felt positively unsafe on the moorings (even on foot) and totally unable to ride down the steeper slopes of the hill. Youth brings a feeling on invincibility that overrides sense!
Quote from: stevewalker on September 04, 2017, 11:30:01 PM
Youth brings a feeling on invincibility that overrides sense!
:hmmm: I must still be young at heart as I manage to do senseless things with startling regularity, if my wife's censures are anything to go by. ;D
Quote from: Bealman on September 04, 2017, 11:24:37 PM
And yes, I stayed in an old folks home there which reminded me of the Hotel California!
Eh? ??? ???
They had mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice? :o
:laughabovepost:
Were you a prisoner there, of your own device?
That's how it felt! :uneasy:
I wrote a long piece about the things I've lost of my childhood memories (plus most of my adult life) but it's vanished into the ether. So here's a precis...
Schools of the 5 schools I attended.
1 is a community centre, two are demolished, one is half its previous size and one is still intact...
Of my places of work
Two have closed and moved elsewhere, one has gone completely, 4 have gone down from around 600 staff to about 25., one is half it's size. and I'm still in this one...
Of my accommodation, (mostly Military)
One is now a prison, two are abandoned, five are now council estates (in some case my actual buildings demolished). one is now a block of flats, three Are still intact.
The railway Station I'm modelling in EM gauge has a through line but the civilian station site is two housing estates..
Someone is following me around and destroying all my past memories
Quote from: The Q on September 06, 2017, 11:44:27 AM
Someone is following me around and destroying all my past memories
Just got back from Sri Lanka, where the music in the hotels is never more recent than the 1980s.
I guess with the Tamil civil war and the consequent reduction in tourism in that period, they missed out on the last 25 years of western music.
Worst had to be the guest clarinettist for the evening murdering Lionel Ritchie's "Hello"
Something like howling dogs...
Someone is following me around and reviving all of my past memories - badly
Don't lose sight of the fact that some things are better now than in the 60s/70s.
- there's a much better choice of food & drink in supermarkets
- cars are more confortable and easier to drive
- we have McDonalds and other fast food
- pubs can open all day
- vacuum cleaners actually work
- more facilities for sport
- etc.
Best regards,
Joe
QuoteDon't lose sight of the fact that some things are better now than in the 60s/70s.
- there's a much better choice of food & drink in supermarkets
And the death of town centers and the small independent butcher, baker and greengrocer
Quote- cars are more confortable and easier to drive
and almost impossible to repair yourself
Quote
we have McDonalds and other fast food
And an increase in obesity and diabetes
Quotepubs can open all day
no more thrill of the afternoon/late night lock in
Quotevacuum cleaners actually work
Nothing wrong with the old hoover junior
Quotemore facilities for sport
And thats an improvement on jumpers for goalpost and 37 a side played in the road with a shout of "car" every 10 minutes?
Quote from: themadhippy on September 06, 2017, 06:28:06 PM
QuoteDon't lose sight of the fact that some things are better now than in the 60s/70s.
- there's a much better choice of food & drink in supermarkets
And the death of town centers and the small independent butcher, baker and greengrocer
Quote- cars are more confortable and easier to drive
and almost impossible to repair yourself
Quote
we have McDonalds and other fast food
And an increase in obesity and diabetes
Quotepubs can open all day
no more thrill of the afternoon/late night lock in
Quotevacuum cleaners actually work
Nothing wrong with the old hoover junior
Quotemore facilities for sport
And thats an improvement on jumpers for goalpost and 37 a side played in the road with a shout of "car" every 10 minutes?
What a depressing outlook. Swings and roundabouts... Some things are better and others are worse. Best to focus on the good things of today methinks....
:claphappy:
.....like good quality n Gauge models
I've said for years that I long for 1987's technology in all ways except medical knowledge/technology.
Fun thread! Some things are better: Model railroad stuff, The Office (both sides of the pond), Detectorists, my wife and I are allowed to be married, my kids can go to any school/college, health foods taste better.
And some things are worse: Social media, the 24-7 "news" cycle, "reality" tv, traffic, #!@*& smart phones that have everyone with their faces pointing down.
No matter what, :NGaugersRule:
Quote from: daffy on September 06, 2017, 06:41:31 PM
.....like good quality n Gauge models
Spot on Sir... Now where did I put me cheque book.
:)
Quote from: austinbob on September 06, 2017, 06:57:20 PM
Quote from: daffy on September 06, 2017, 06:41:31 PM
.....like good quality n Gauge models
Spot on Sir... Now where did I put me cheque book.
:)
I prefer a bank transfer Bob. I'll send you the codes. :D
Quote from: themadhippy on September 06, 2017, 06:28:06 PM
QuoteDon't lose sight of the fact that some things are better now than in the 60s/70s.
- there's a much better choice of food & drink in supermarkets
And the death of town centers and the small independent butcher, baker and greengrocer
Did you ever visit Tescos in the early 70s ?
Rice was exotic (except when boiled with milk and sugar and served with a dollop of jam).
Does anyone feel nostalgic about tapioca, sago, school dinners, gypsy tart (makes you ..........) ?
Does anyone miss the Navy Lark, Sing Something Simple with the Adams Singers, followed by Sunday evening TV ?
Best regards,
Joe
QuoteDid you ever visit Tescos in the early 70s
Not often,we were more a fine fare family.
Quote from: broadsword on September 04, 2017, 03:46:07 PM
As someone said, the past is a foreign country!
It was the novelist LP Hartley: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there". It's the first line of his novel 'The Go-Between'.
Quote from: davidinyork on September 06, 2017, 09:08:51 PM
Quote from: broadsword on September 04, 2017, 03:46:07 PM
As someone said, the past is a foreign country!
It was the novelist LP Hartley: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there". It's the first line of his novel 'The Go-Between'.
Ah. I thought that was J.R. Hartley, the chap who piddled on a telephone directory and called it the Yellow Pages :dunce:
I thought J R Hartley was the chap who went fishing for flies ???
If the past is a foreign country, which one was it? :hmmm: Did I speak the lingo when I was there, cos I can only speak English now? :-\
You forget so much. :(
Steam trains....here they are a rarity..wa have not very steam locos in service.
IRON MAIDEN in Rome (1981) one ticket=£ 5
IRON MAIDEN in Rome (2016) one ticket £ 50😟.
...too much trash food
Cheers
Marco
Quote from: joe cassidy on September 06, 2017, 08:32:12 PM
Quote from: themadhippy on September 06, 2017, 06:28:06 PM
QuoteDon't lose sight of the fact that some things are better now than in the 60s/70s.
- there's a much better choice of food & drink in supermarkets
And the death of town centers and the small independent butcher, baker and greengrocer
Did you ever visit Tescos in the early 70s ?
Rice was exotic (except when boiled with milk and sugar and served with a dollop of jam).
Does anyone feel nostalgic about tapioca, sago, school dinners, gypsy tart (makes you ..........) ?
Does anyone miss the Navy Lark, Sing Something Simple with the Adams Singers, followed by Sunday evening TV ?
Best regards,
Joe
[/quote
No.... where I lived for the majority of the 1970s there was no Tesco and :) still isn't :) (Benbecula, Outer Hebridies). I didn't see a Tesco until 1990...in Milton Keynes.
Our current Tesco food aisles are gradually being taken over by pre-prepared plastic junk in expensive small plastic packaging... another aisle went last week.
The Military bases had a NAAFI, very variable.... :(
I certainly don't miss the school food, which at one of the schools was bad enough to reach national TV. :dunce:
Yes I do miss the navy lark.... Left hand down a bit... and I still listen to Friday night is Music night....
I hate Macdonalds Sweet Buns with your burgers?! that's just not right!! and I hate the Office...
The only MacDonalds owned café I would Enter, is the one in Armadale Castle... (that's Clan MacDonald not a stupid red clown)..
:) :) :)Fast food.. Fish /Chicken / Sausage / Pie and Chips from the chip shop in Station Approach, Ludgershall. :) :). food of the gods.... Now gone in the turning of the old railway station site into a housing estate.
When I moved to Norfolk (1999) we had a bank in bank street, a baker in bakers street and a good variety of other shops, then Tescos opened. The banks / building societies have gone as has the bakers it's mostly charity shops now......
"cos I can only speak English now", you'd have had a clip round the ear'ole from the teacher for saying "cos" and not "because"...
Quote from: joe cassidy on September 06, 2017, 08:32:12 PM
Does anyone feel nostalgic about tapioca, sago, school dinners, gypsy tart (makes you ..........) ?
Does anyone miss the Navy Lark, Sing Something Simple with the Adams Singers, followed by Sunday evening TV ?
School dinners - green lumps in the mashed potato, prismatic scum floating on the boiled mince (a bit like you see floating on oil), cabbage with the life boiled out of it :sick2:, pink custard on rock hard choc bricks (yum). But at one school we had a tuck shop where you could get cream buns and iced chelsea buns :drool: At another school the seniors got coffee with their dinner but it came in metal handleless mugs so you had to wrap a handkerchief round it or scald your fingers :ouch:
Yes - I remember Sing Something Sinful, along with Sunday lunchtime radio like The Goons, Round the Horn, The Clitheroe Kid, Hancock's Half Hour etc but in the evening my parents used to watch the appalling Black & White Minstrel Show ::)
Yeah my mother used to love that. :sick:
Quote from: joe cassidy on September 06, 2017, 08:32:12 PM
Does anyone miss the Navy Lark, Sing Something Simple with the Adams Singers, followed by Sunday evening TV ?
Certainly do! I still listen to the Navy Lark on DAB! :D
Is that on on Radio 4 Extra? Lots of good old stuff on there.
:)
Yes, indeed. R4x
Quote from: The Q on September 06, 2017, 11:44:27 AM
I wrote a long piece about the things I've lost of my childhood memories (plus most of my adult life) but it's vanished into the ether. So here's a precis...
Schools of the 5 schools I attended.
1 is a community centre, two are demolished, one is half its previous size and one is still intact...
Of my places of work
Two have closed and moved elsewhere, one has gone completely, 4 have gone down from around 600 staff to about 25., one is half it's size. and I'm still in this one...
Three of the five schools I attended have been demolished, I found when I checked them up on Google maps. All three were in the same town and I haven't been back there for 20 years so the sense of loss is minimal (OK, I punched the air in celebration when I saw one had been reduced to the outline of its foundations). The two other schools (in very different towns) still exist.
One of the schools I attended is now a Wetherspoons type pub with an
attached comedy club. Others demolished, however couldn't give a
monkeys .
Pleased to say all three of the schools I attended are still going strong.
Gorringe Park primary school Mitcham
Merryhills primary school Enfield
Enfield Grammar school
:beers:
Quote from: marco neri on September 07, 2017, 12:03:47 AM
IRON MAIDEN in Rome (1981) one ticket=£ 5
IRON MAIDEN in Rome (2016) one ticket £ 50.
Cheers
Marco
Led Zeppelin at Birmingham Odeon in 1973 (?) : £1
The Ohio PLayers at Hammersmith Odeon on 23/6/76 : £3.50
Don't get me started on the price of beer !
Best regards,
Joe
The old derelict army camp where I used to play as a boy is now the Cambridge Science Park...
I would like to feel nostalgic, but I must agree that it is an improvement on what was there before.
Cheers,
Chris
How i remember the village i grew up in
(http://www.deanshanger.com/oldfact.jpeg)
And how it looked a few years back
(http://media.rightmove.co.uk/dir/24k/23441/37153602/23441_WGC150605_IMG_05_0000_max_656x437.jpg)
My place of birth, Sorrento Hospital, Moseley
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/fond-memories-of-moseleys-sorrento-maternity-219331 (http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/fond-memories-of-moseleys-sorrento-maternity-219331)
now Sorrento Court
http://www.housingcare.org/housing-care/facility-info-35985-sorrento-court-moseley-england.aspx (http://www.housingcare.org/housing-care/facility-info-35985-sorrento-court-moseley-england.aspx)
Re. schools, try this one: in my final year of junior school, they built a new infants school across the village, which opened the following year. The school I attended has largely been knocked down now, apart from part which has been turned into some sort of community centre.
But the school which had just been built as I left has now been knocked down, and a new new school has been built next door to the aforementioned remains of the old school, on what used to be its playing field.
Do I feel old?
Just to Identify my schools..
Ballykelly Primary school Northern Ireland, Still going...
St James Primary School Ludgershall Wilts, demolished now has housing on site. This was the one on TV because of the meals, served in the scouts hall, from meals prepared some distance away and served from "hot boxes" (read mildly warm)...
Tidworth Down Secondary Modern School for Boys, my dad also went to this school when it opened in the early 1950s. Demolished replaced by an Academy on the sports ground. [url=http://www.thewellingtonacademy.org.uk/Pages/Index.asp]http://www.thewellingtonacademy.org.uk/Pages/Index.asp (https://www.facebook.com/Tidworth-Down-Secondary-Modern-School-for-Boys-209709492448518/) note it's the modern building as the academy covers several schools..
Eochar School or Sgoil an Iochdair, now a community centre http://www.iochdar.co.uk/ (http://www.iochdar.co.uk/) The Primary sgoil might still be open, but the secondary school has definitely moved. I notice on the web site they are raising money to improve the football pitch, which when I was there had in interesting feature... A burn / stream running across it at 45degrees to the layout of the pitch...
Inverness High School still open but half it's size all the porta cabins have gone. https://invernesshs.wordpress.com/ (https://invernesshs.wordpress.com/)