I was thinking about nostalgia today – you know the things ain’t what the used to be feeling. Well, I’m not really someone who dwells in the past, or so I think. I like the present, my day today, and I’m quite keen on the future too. I’ve found recently that more than a few of my friends talk about the past much more than they used to do in the old days – you know when pubs were real pubs, when cigarettes were supposed to be good for you, and no one wore seatbelts in cars. Well, I don’t drink as much alcohol as I did in my so-called good old days; I gave up smoking decades ago, and I used to have nightmares of being thrown forward through shattering windscreens. I regret some things about the present – Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, obviously….also the last ten years, at least, of British politics…. climate change is really happening as opposed to being a fear of the distant future as it was once for my generation. The good old days were full of anxieties, the present is too, chaps. I had many nightmares in my youth – not just crashing through windscreens – nuclear war, murderers climbing through my bedroom window in the middle of the night; when I was very little I was also frightened of ghosts. Then there was the real nightmares of school playgrounds, compulsory rugby, and, maybe worst of all, teenage parties. So, I’m ok with the here and now – we can at least have a go at changing things.

I can still enjoy looking at old photographs, reading history books, walking in bluebell woods in April and May, summer trips to the seaside, but also going to the cinema most weeks over the last year and seeing so many great films. If I get a little nostalgic at times, it is for the lost pleasures of the iPod (why can’t they come back?), my Chicago 88 converse trainers (they pinch my toes these days), and, I suppose, if I regret something, it is the careless and ignorant freedom of lighting a cigarette.

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It seems that I was not alone in enjoying the beautiful February sunshine in Lewes’ Southover Grange Gardens yesterday – and why not, early Springtime impulses are all about couples sitting on park benches with a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. Cheers, whoever you were. I was just there for a walk but I was listening to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty music on my iPod. I’m telling you, it was all dead romantic in Lewes yesterday.

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