24th November:

Ahh, nostalgia. Not quite as good as it used to be, though.

Nobody seems to do it quite like the Brits. Get a group of thirty-something folk together in a room, apply liberal quantities of wine and stand back. As quick as you can say “was George male, female or just bi-curious?” the conversation will have turned to 1970’s children’s TV shows. The Goodie’s recently reformed for a TV special on BBC2 and Tiswas is apparently to grace our screens once more in a one-off celebration of all that is anarchic, soggy and flan-based. Makes me all aglow, just the thought of it. Many is the young lad whose first case of pyjama tepee will have been experienced on a Saturday morning in front of the telly thanks to Sally James and that inspired marriage of large breasts and denim waistcoat (Playtex 34C left in the dressing room).

Every generation has its golden age and we Brits love nothing more than harking back to our own personal ‘good old days’ whilst selectively ignoring the accompanying inconvenient unpleasantries (Polio, TB, infant mortality rates, women not having the vote, homosexuals being placed in asylums or the 3-day week, anyone?). Our appetite for it seems insatiable, although there is apparently a petition going around to stop Boney M from reforming. “During the 50’s”, my grandmother used to say, “I could leave my front-door unlocked without worrying about burglars”. It seemed churlish to remind her that she lived in a cold, 2-room council house with a family of seven. They’d find nothing to take if they did break in. I might know my neighbours but I have central heating and am statistically more likely to live beyond 70.

Is the best time of life the time you are in or does this nostalgia represent a fruitless quest for something unobtainable? Every year, thousands emmigrate to warmer climes in search of a simpler, less stressful existence. Do these people find their Valhalla? The TV show ‘The Darling Buds of May’ caught the public’s imagination in the early 1990’s because it offered a romantic and heavily stylised vision of life conducted during a gentler time. If nothing else, the show did stimulate some debate in the serious press about the fragmentation of the traditional family unit and people’s increasing mobility resulting in this yearning for a bygone era when you knew your neighbours by their first name and coppers could give gobby adolescents a good cuff round the ear with complete impunity.

The Thatcher once memorably said “there is no such thing as society” but all the signs seem to be that in 2006 many of us have never felt a greater need for a genuine sense of community and belonging.