These and other pointless questions will not be answered in this post. It does make you think though, if today is INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY, and people celebrate the annoying use of shoutyness in correspondence, is “National Nostalgia Week” such a insane suggestion? But I digress, I know its an uncommon thing for me to go slightly off-topic but that’s what I seem to have done here.
The concept of “National Nostalgia Week” has come about because this week seems to be a collection of things reminding me of days gone by, basically a string of nostalgic memories for bygone days. Let me share a few here for you dear reader.
Nostalgia 1.
Wednesday in the office we were listening to my last.fm stream and it randomly played “Your in the army now” by Status Quo. Now I’ve not heard that song since I was about 15, and it was played almost constantly at the ACF camp I was attending. In fact, a group of us even rewrote the lyrics to be a comedy of events involving people from our battalion. We even performed the song as part of a show for Christmas that year, it was a good show with staged fights and fake blood the works. Now I have not thought about my Childhood, or my time spent in the ACF for a very, very, very long time. Its amazing that one song can bring back so many memories.
Nostalgia 2.
Yesterday (Thursday) I was working from home in the afternoon, and chatting to an old friend/X-colleague/Training Partner/Fellow Farmyard torrets sufferer PlanetPete. He recently started his own blog over at ChimonTendo, and had imported all his old LiveJournal posts into the archive, and we were reading the Insanity of the olden days, and trying to work out where such pearls of wisdom as “Beware the fuzzy duck with a mongoose on its back” came from.
Nostalgia 3.
This morning before commuting to work I spotted my eldest nephews car parked on my parents drive so I popped over to say hello. He’s been working night shifts down in London Town for the last few weeks, and I was curious to how he was getting on. During the conversation it was mentioned that he may be working in Ireland next week, so I was joking how he’d probably get to Anglesey and get lost. It was then that my mother said she was worried since he often speaks without thinking so could say the wrong thing over there and get in trouble. I defended him by saying its easy to say the wrong thing, and recalled an incident that happened many years ago on my first visit to Dublin.
I was drinking at the bar in a pub with a friend when this young attractive girl came over and sat in my lap, apparently it was a quicker way to get to the crowded bar. So we started talking while she was getting server, well she started telling me about her collection of studded collars and such she had at home, and it started from there. During the conversation she pointed around the room and said “look at them all getting drunk on a Saturday night, its silly really as we have to confess it all in the morning, it makes you wonder why we do it!” to which I answer without thinking “I don’t know. I’m not a catholic!“. Have you ever seen a horror film when the people walk into a Inn on a moor and the whole place goes silent and stare at them? Its what happened, everything went silent, people stared, and I’m sure a group of men in the shadows started to put hands under jackets as if reaching for something. Remember the Catholic-Protestant issues they have over there. Luckily I had the sense of mind to follow it up with “I’m Welsh!” at which the noise returned to the pub, and several blokes came over to greet me and point out the Welsh hate the English as much as they do so I was all right. I then had several hours of drinks and anti-English jokes.
So all in all its been a week of being reminded of my past, who knows what it means, if anything. I will just smile to myself and say to the Verse “Thanks for the memories”.