Nostalgia

[Eve]

After reading Sqad's thread in H&F while enjoying the rainbow sherbet I got from a fab old fashioned sweet shop in Buxton yesterday, thought I'd post a more general thread.

What's your best nostalgic memory?

[dot.hawkes]

Hi Jenna, i have absolutely loads, we grew up on a farm and every summer seemed like we were in heaven with the animals and the harvest and fields to play in with our ponies and horses and dogs everywhere! everything was ruled by the animals needing looking after and the days seemed so long in summer, we had a huge walled in field behind the house that had been the ornamental garden for the Hall that had been pulled down in 1928 when our cottage had been built, there was a cellar still there and it was about 6 feet above the surface and 6 feet under and we spent hours playing on that when we were little. There had been an ornamental moat behind the Hall which had been drained and created a small valley in the field where the grass had grown over the steps and launching bays of the drained lake, we could invent some amazing fantasies there as it was all like an adventure theme park, when it was raining the bottom of the lake would get boggy and the cattle would stand in it and get stuck in the mud and we had to get them out, we were little kids but were able to coax them out before dad came in from the fields and it was something we did for years that, some of the Charolais were a pain too cos they were smart and knew full well how to get out but enjoyed the attention!

[Mamyalynne]

Dot your mention of a cellar made me think of the chorus to a song and its here LOL

http://ingeb.org/songs/idontwan.html

[Schutzengel]

Six weeks of summer holidays spent on grandad's farm, every year. Climbing the hay bays and collecting the eggs from between the bales. Sneaking into the granary loft and eating 'cow cakes'. Watching the cows being hand milked, and my uncle squirting milk for the row of waiting cats. Knowing the names of all the cows. Swinging on the shippon door admiring Billy the massive Charolais bull, who was a big softy. Feeding the little calves with milk from a bucket. Riding back from either the hay fields, or potato fields, on the back of one of the shire horses. Captain was huge, black, and with white fluffy feet. Duke was chestnut with a white blaze on his face. And at the end of every tiring day, climbing the stairs to bed with a candle. I wish I could go back and relive it all again, but dreams and memories are very precious. I'm happy to have had such wonderful experiences to look back on. Schutz.

[Ice.Maiden]

Oooh Jenna! Was the little shop you meant Sallie Moonbeam's? It's brilliant in there. When I go in, I get a bag of all the stuff that I wasn't allowed to have when I was little, because "it'll rot your teeth". These sweets aren't for my children, but for me!! : )
Apart from that, I have very happy memories of growing up surrounded by fields and woodland, and lots of animals on my parents' smallholding. We used to play in the cornfields until it was dark, and make dens and treehouses. We had a fabulous swing which was made from rope and an old tyre. Wonderful.

[mallam]

Im male, sqad - I can't really see a female calling her son "boy", but perh you know of this practice by either parent.

I don't nned to c'mon beause I wasnt reacting to a Pythonesque cardboard-box-in-the-gutter story, and did not imagine you were particularly more underprivileged then me. It was just your mastery of good old-fashioned nostalgia that got to me. You are the champion of this thread.

I had sort of assumed you must be retired, as you are a remarkably conscientious poster for an oh-so-busy doctor (what sort, btw?). I had even thought you might be a spoof, but now I see you're just hyperactive. with your ba'sterdy and medickery and extroversion and your hilarious dinner parties and conversations.

You're not that hilarious columnist of A Doctor's Diary in the Times now out on the lam, are you? I was devastated to see him cash in and drop his fans like hot potatoes.

[sqad617]

mallam.....LOL LOL LOL

a retired surgeon, but many of my old patients may recognise your description of "spoof" quality.........and perhaps many on AB too.

No mallam...I am not a columnist either.

[Marijn]

Dot and Schutz, that must've been fantastic having your childhood on a farm, but hard work maybe.

[mallam]

Hi dot, schutzi, and i.maid. Still a bit out of it or would have commented on your posts here. I had plans to wax all lyrical about a bit of nostalgia of my own. May yet get round to it, but in the meantime:

I did say sqad was the champion of this thread, but you 3 are champions too, with your reminiscences of real farming.

We weren�t your actual farming kids, but we had the run of a huge farm with cornfields above our heads to get frighteningly lost in (while playing hide-and-seek, so not for long), open fields and meadows to roll around in, and native deciduous forest all around. Then the rot set in with building blight (tho it did seem to spread less malignantly in those days), but even that meant half-built houses to explore, chasing one another over open joists and being out cold for half an hour after falling thru three floors of them into the cellar, and coming round to find one�s playmates still agitated about whether to get help in such forbidden territory (I did come round, so no parents were ever told).

I thought I knew all about nostalgia, but then I went to study in Japan. The whole country is awash with nostalgia. They are the most nostalgic people in the world. The Japanese for roughly �the old folks at home� is Furusato, and there is a song of lost childhood and not blue, but very green remembered hills, called �Furusato�, which I think is my favourite of all such songs:

That mountain where we used to chase rabbits/that river where we used to fish for young carp/which even now my dreams roam round/ � my never-to-be-forgotten country home!

And it goes from strength to strength over all the following verses.

And as I said at the start, I haven�t started about my own nostalgia yet!