Connecting with the past

I've been remembering weird things lately, I think probably because I've been trying to drag myself back into a bit of a more organic existence and work on my fear and loathing issues.

What fear and loathing issues are theses? Well... where do I start?

I'm a confessed news junkie, I'm supposed to be, it's my job. Unfortunately, this means I get to see a lot of the lowest acts of humanity, unedited and uncut, definitely different to what you see on the 6 o'clock news.

This has more or less chipped away at my optimism over the years and I find it very difficult to look at ANYTHING anymore without having to question it. If you read this blog often enough you can see this in my anti-religious rants, add this to my Scottish DNA and you get the genesis of my favorite PG Wodehouse quote that adorns all my emails:

"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine".

Anyway, getting back to memories. I heard a song called "I Can't Afford Top Care Anymore" by the Scottish band "Doll by Doll". The song is written by Jackie Leven and talks about women walking through town ringing a bell for sailors who have drowned, something that happened all too often in the fishing villages of Fife where he grew up.

It took me back to Fife as well. We used to have a holiday home in Pittenween. We would drive 2 hours from our house after work every Friday and then back again on Sunday night. Fife felt like the 3rd World compared to the relative sophistication of Glasgow. It was all farmers and fishermen.

The house was above the Cooperative store run by a nice old guy called Bill Balfour and his wife Peggy.

I specifically remember the bathroom in this house. It was a cast iron bath (which my parents hated and ripped out and replaced with a crappy shower) that had the wash hand basin directly above the bath itself. There was no waste pipe, the water drained from the sink directly into the bath. I can only assume it was designed before the advent of indoor plumbing when water was a precious thing because it certainly had no hygienic value.

Each room in the house also had a fireplace and mantle. although since my parents installed radiators none of them were used any more.

Bill Balfour managed the store and we would go in there for our 1p Fizzy Lizzy's and Refreshers. The shop was always very sparse with a lot of empty floor space and not a lot of product. There wasn't any of the overwhelming advertisements or muzak that you get in todays supermarket. It had a dusty veneer to it.

Bill was a really handy guy. In the back behind the store was a huge garage where the Coop van was kept. In the garage Bill was always building stuff, one time he built a motorbike for his nephew that had made from cannibalized parts from other bikes. He also built a bogey cart (a go kart) from some old wooden boxes and pram wheels that I would happily ride round and round the Coop yard for hours.

They say it is unhealthy to wallow in nostalgia but to be honest, I find it easier to connect with the present if I can connect with the good things in the past.

It's a good thing to do some mental spring cleaning every now and then. Turn off the telly, stop reading pananoidcrazies.com and look at some old photos. Remember how things were before the internet, ATM machines and mobile phones. Days were slower and longer and people had more time to be kind. Let's try to get back to that.