Recently I read about someone who was setting up in business to provide people with their lost childhood countryside memories. We ‘all’ have them, but they can vary a great deal. I’ve already forgotten what the example given in the article was, but it wasn’t mine.
I quite like the sound of flies buzzing. Annoying, but it brings back memories of somewhere else.
(While I’m on this topic, I’ll rant a wee bit. The one setting up in the memory business was described as an Englishman who remembered growing up in Northern Ireland. I decided it was just about possible. But the red hair and beard made me think they might not know he’s not English. Then they called him a Briton. Not once was he Irish, Northern or otherwise. But then, I am used to coming from Switzerland. Or Swindon. It’s all the same to others.)
So, some years ago the Baltimore cousins visited, and the one who hails from India enjoyed the train which goes past the Bookwitch gardens. The smell of diesel fumes brought back fond memories. I was glad to be of service.
Without thinking, I quickly mentioned my – unusual – nostalgic smell. The privy. Oh dear. But having read The World of Poo, I sort of feel vindicated. I suppose nostalgia doesn’t absolutely have to smell of roses.
My nostalgia trigger is the sound of a single-engined aeroplane buzzing distantly through a summer sky.
An experience common enough to have been named (in Douglas Adams’s Meaning of Liff) as a ‘Hambledon’.
You too? We get them here, and I ‘am always on the beach’ when I hear that plane engine.