Last Saturday morning I made the five hour drive down to St Ives with my older brother and mother. We had loaded up the trunk with three suitcases, my brother’s dog and a bag of shopping for the journey- bottles of water, mini Mars Bars and bags of Twiglets. (‘All low-cal!’ Mum triumphantly told us). The last time we had done this was 37 years ago. I was five, my brother nine, and we had giggled the entirety of the train journey down from Manchester.
And suddenly here we were again. Different people, and yet the same. Mum walks slower now, my brother, though still handsome, has grey around his temples. I, meanwhile, am a far cry from the child who used to dance around Porthminster Beach in a cherry-red swimsuit.
My brother had planned the trip. He yearns for the ocean, and so, on a whim had booked a small cottage just metres away from the beach with enough room for three. We are unusual as a family in that neither my brother nor I, though we are both well into our 40s, are tied down by family. He is single, and though I am married, my husband and I enjoy independent lives away from one another when the occasion calls for it. (For the last two years we have been working side by side at home, and so a weekend escape to the outer edges of the country seemed like an occasion that ‘called for it’.)
We arrived sometime after dusk, exhausted and stinking of Twiglets. The car slowed as we made the descent down Trelyon Avenue and into the tiny cobbled streets of St Ives. Every Breath You Take by The Police came on the radio and I commented on how strange it was that such a popular song was actually about a stalker. To which my brother burst out laughing, having thought it was one of the most romantic songs of the eighties.
The days that followed were blissful. We were three grown adults now, each of us changed and rendered different people by the lives that had been thrown at us over the last four decades. Yet we quickly settled into a gentle, familiar rhythm. We talked about the ‘good old days’ a lot, recalling the week we had spent as a family right here in this very town. My brother remembered there was a Born Again Christian group that used to put dances on at the beach for the children. I remembered there was a shop that sold hundreds of different sea shells displayed like Pick n Mix sweets, and dog statues fashioned out of pieces of rock and coral. I had wanted one of those statues so badly that holiday, but, having never been good at directly asking for what I want (yes, even now) I used to just stare at them through the window. ‘They’re nice, aren’t they mummy?’ I’d say, presuming every harried parent understands the subtlest hint from their child.
To my amazement the shop is still there - completely unchanged. Of course the dog statues are absolutely horrific and you have to wonder who the hell wants to buy shells by the pound. But still, there is something lovely in knowing there is still a place for a shop like this in today’s world.
I walked past the shell shop every day to get to the beach and as I did it filled with a feeling that was hard to place. A sort of sweet happiness for what had taken place all those years ago, but also a sadness that it had passed, and that time was moving along at a speed I could not fathom. It’s not that I longed to return to my childhood you are to understand, because the truth is I hated being a child, but I longed for something. Something that I knew, I could no longer have. I was swept up in that most complex of feelings…nostalgia.
I am terribly nostalgic. I always have been. When my husband goes away I am drawn to sad old movies of times past. (Last month it was The Way We Were. And yes, I blubbed through the entire thing. How schmaltzy am I?). Like most people I am also midway through Euphoria at the minute. And whilst my teenage years contained no drug taking, self-harm or dangerous sex, it makes me yearn for my 90’s adolescence, despite the fact nothing remarkable ever happened to me during that time.
It’s widely acknowledge that there are different types of nostalgia. (Some cultures even have different, untranslatable words for its various forms). I can pinpoint three, though I am sure there are many others. But there, at least, three that fill my life.
The first is the type of nostalgia that offers a warm respite from a difficult situation. Like when you’re having an awful time at work and you suddenly look back at some job that you thought was pretty crappy at the time and which seems like perfection now. In my younger years, I leaned on this type of nostalgia a great deal. I think it is a consequence of getting through those scratchy years that fall somewhere between 16 and 23. When I was 17 I tried to rediscover the joy I had first felt, aged 13, when I read the Sweet Valley High series of books. But at 17 I knew too much about the world to find anything other than banality in them, which left me feeling sad and frustrated; like hearing an old song you once loved but which you can no longer dance to.
Then there’s the type of nostalgia that makes you wistful for the things that didn’t happen way back when. Lost opportunities. I think this is why Euphoria is making me lament my adolescence and all those wasted evenings copying out text books as a means of revision, when I could have been climbing out of windows to get into parties I wasn’t invited to. Did I waste ‘the good old days’ you think to yourself. What a fool not to have lived large and appreciated the time whilst I had it. For now it is gone, gone, gone…
And then there’s the sort of nostalgia which simply reaches out, catching you off-guard, like a soft hand pulling you back into the warm, cosseting past. This is the best sort of nostalgia; a balm for the soul.
As I wandered around St Ives, the buildings untouched save for some fashionable Farrow and Ball paint colours on the doors, I experienced varying degrees of nostalgia. I was wistful for the time we had shared together as a family. I was sad that almost 40 years had passed. I was comforted by the fact St Ives, still existed, virtually unchanged and yet frustrated that I failed to remember more about that golden time all those years ago. Oh how the present is wasted on those living it I thought to myself.
But here’s the thing: the past is deceitful and we should remember this. It has a habit of sieving out all the bad stuff and leaving, it its place an idealised version of what the past once was. A version that only exists in our head.
I am travelling as I write this to you today. I have spent hours queuing at passport control with tourists who insist on having earphone-less Facetime conversations with family members they have just left behind. I have forgotten tip money for the taxi driver and so have been met with a menacing glare (which is kind of fair enough), whilst just this morning, I collapsed into a fit of hysterical tears as I tried to figure out the new covid rules and regulations of travel. And yet in lockdown oh how we all idealised travel! How we dreamed of glossy airports and smiling air stewards and taxi drivers who spoke another language and ferried us off to hotels and adventure. As life resumes to normal-ish I have heard many people look back on lockdown with their own misty-eyed form of nostalgia. We don’t look back and remember the stampede for loo paper or the five hour wait to get through to Expedia on the phone. Instead, we remember the comfort of working at home, the empty streets, the plane-less skies and the UK mini breaks we convinced ourselves were as good as a weekend away in Spain. Playing with the past then is a dangerous game, unless, of course, you remember the tricks it plays.
As our trip neared its end and I walked up Trelyon Avenue to catch the train back to London, I thought back to that night as the car pulled in and Sting sang about obsessive love. Already the memory seemed too perfect to have been real. Already the soft hand of time was pulling me back and I thought, not for the first time, how the present is wasted on fools like us.
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