Thursday 21 February 2008

Four In The Morning

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

It is indeed Four In The Morning and I'm lying awake again unable to get back to sleep. Some people count sheep when they can't sleep, I seem to lay in bed and contemplate what to write on here.

I was working late last night and as such was not having my evening meal until way past my usual time. I couldn't be bothered cooking so decided to stop off for a Chinese take-away. The particular place I called in to I had not visited since 1991 and as I was in the area thought why not. It was an old favourite of mine and it proved to be a very strange experience.

The woman who used to run the place was still there but had been relegated to the fryer while the little kids who used to be running around in the back where now taking the orders and dealing with the customers. This gave me a real feeling of tempus fugit.

I know time moves on but this Chinese lady seemed to have aged a lot more than the seventeen years between my visits. She had put on a little weight and didn't seem quite as "with it" as she did all those years ago when she did single handed what it now took three of her children to undertake.

I kept looking at her hoping she would recognise me but she must have served thousands of people over the years and there was no way she would have remembered me. But I wanted her to. I wanted to know how she thought I had changed over the intervening years... but it wasn't to be.

The experience gave me a real feeling of nostalgia.

I spent many years of my life living in this area and I bet there is no one there today who even remembers me being there. The building I used to live in has been knocked down and most of the people will have moved away.

I even remembered the day of my sixteenth birthday. Walking to school through the local park and experiencing a feeling of total "wonderment" with the world. A feeling of total contentment that I have never felt since and had only felt once previously to that.

Images, memories and feelings from the years spent living in the area were flooding into my head as I stood and waited for my order...

...A girl I once knew...

...An old departed family pet...

...asthma I developed and outgrew in the space of a few months.

Why did I remember so much about the area and the people who lived there but there was no one there to remember me? Too many times one of these many thoughts just ended in what if...

Maybe, sometimes, it doesn't pay to dwell too long in the past.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

In My Day

I was chatting with a friend the other day while her kids were playing around the house. While she was chatting to me she kept jumping up and down to see what the kids were up to at such an alarming rate that it started me thinking of how things have changed over the years. As a child I was very much left to get on with life. My mother didn't run around after me like mothers seem to these days.

I survived being born to a mother who smoked and drank while she carried me. She took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Once I was born the trauma really started. My baby cot was covered with bright colored lead-based paint. I had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when I rode my bike, I had no helmet.

As a child, I rode in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. I drank water from the garden hosepipe and not from a bottle. I shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

I ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but I wasn't overweight because I was always playing out! I would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as I was back when the streetlights came on my mother was ok with it.

No one was able to reach me all day. And I was OK.

I would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then ride down a hill, only to find out I forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, I learned to solve the problem.

I didn't have a Playstation, Nintendo, X-box, or any video games at all, no five hundred channels on Cable TV, no DVD or video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phone, no text messaging, no personal computer, no Internet or Internet chat rooms...

I HAD FRIENDS and we went outside!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth. We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

The generations who grew up in this fashion produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years has seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it!

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

Friday 1 February 2008

White Rabbits

White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits.

It's now over a month since Christmas and New Year, just how scary a thought is that?