Spending Time

	As I wade through the damp pasture the scent of petrichor places me back in time. Out of nowhere the smell of freshly fired cap guns transports me through the rows of terraced houses, with washing strewn across grainy back streets from one yard to the next. Back when the main street was just a lane, before the suburban waist band expanded to the fringe of a town. When ducks swam in the pond on the village green, where the entire community gathered for the summer fair. Where did that smell drift from? I haven’t fired a cap gun since I was a child. But the smell manifested itself as if conjured by my mind to invoke a memory. Where do these memories lie?

I live on the street below where I used to live when I was young, and yet I only walk there occasionally, like a memory which is almost permanently forgotten until you rediscover it every now and then. It’s not my usual route these days, so when I walk it, it takes me back, like I’m presently in the past. The clack of leathered cork off willow still resonates the same familiarity as that lull of late afternoons where you hear the dogs bark over the garden gate, the pigeons stating their reluctance to go from the telephone pole. A dule of doves cooing united upon the fence. Starlings throwing projectiles from the guttering. Half sneezing sparrows chewing the suet. A grist of bees buzzing from flower to flower. Skylarks crooning from the long grass in the field behind the house. I remember my old back garden ran into a corn field, which was the equivalent of a widescreen tv view of the birds flying in from the trees. When haystacks resembled a Monet or Van Gogh. 

The screech of the swifts as they arrive back from Africa causes my mind to  migrate to the clink of milk bottles in the morning. Timeless sounds taking you back and forth as if the past and present are running alongside each other. Like parallel universes intermingling. Is that what memories are? Instead of echoes of the mind, it’s different dimensions of the multiverse. The past and present in tandem. 

As I’m getting older my remembrance of things past is more genuine than romanticised. I’m starting to inherit a nostalgia for those days of lens flares and needle drops. Back when the sunshine shone so much brighter on much longer afternoons. When shops were shut on Sundays, and pubs closed between three and six. The streets resembled ghost towns on what used to be a day of rest, except for those going to church. I remember when going to the seaside was reinvigorating. The smell of sticks of rock stacked neatly in pigeonholes. Enjoying mint choc chip ice cream while  squatting on the beach, digging down the sand until I reached water. Constructing castles that would be ruins before I’d even moved on. All this taking place in front of an array of colourful chalets contrasting with the sunshades and folding wooden deck chairs. I remember the showground was round the back of the Spanish City’s chalky dome. Once a bright colourful Disneyland of eternal youth, now showing its true colours- a washed-out carnival of souls where the aged look out into the distance as if they’ve already died and gone to heaven. Living a kind of limbo between life and death. Isn’t that nostalgia? Is nostalgia a loss of life or a regaining of it? Am I heading in the wrong direction? Chasing after the youth I wasted when I was young. Looking through rose-tinted glasses at the best days of my life even though I didn’t realise I was enjoying them quite so much at the time. After all, life is all disappointment until you see your way past it. Trying to get to the place you’re already at.

	I long to remain in the American graffiti era. Cruising around seeing all the events taking place over a course of one last night. Every time I watch it it’s if I were involved in that night. Not what was going on, but watching what was happening, as if I were there. Striving to get out of a town I couldn’t leave behind. Roaming the corridors in reminiscence, like Curt, trying to open a locker that is no longer mine. Sentimentally fatigued, chasing the mirage of a girl in the night, my naivety balanced by my wisdom. American Graffiti encapsulates the innocence of youth. The so-called realistic depictions, with their profanity and decadence, do not do it justice. They pretend to be real, but when you’re young you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s still innocent. American Graffiti has no pretensions about this. It makes you re-experience the way you felt. When change was both terrifying and exhilarating. Not knowing what was going to happen after always looking for something to happen. When cars were an extension of character that got you to where you wanted to go, and became what you wanted to be, and music provided a soundtrack to your life. Back when music could change your life. When buying a new record would keep track of our memories, and not be forgotten once bought. Where discovering music was once a life experience, now it can’t even change your mood.

	I remember lifting songs from the weekly chart countdown, missing out the radio presenters who deliberately sabotaged the songs to dissuade you from taping them. Compiling them on those transparent florescent 90-minute cassette tapes (somehow the 60-minute ones were never any good), designed to embody the luminescent music of the time, when midi systems were all flashing coloured lights that made them look ultra-modern. I still wish I had that patience. To while away a couple of hours making compilations of my favourite tracks. I miss having the time to do nothing. To just observe. How I wish I could be bored. To be able to slow down time. Now there’s no time to stand and stare. To not care about things that don’t really matter. Doing nothing takes more time. When you’re time’s occupied it flies over. Now there’s no time to while away, there’s too many distractions. When I was younger I had as much time as I had energy. I had time on my hands. As I get older time slips through my fingers. Time goes so much faster. The hand gallops around the clock face as I count the seconds draining away like sand, my life running from me as I chase after it, until I finally have to let it go. 

Maybe it’s the pace of living that’s faster? Our current living is an anaesthesia towards time. We no longer feel time. Time’s so malleable and unyielding. When I was young a month felt like a year. Now I’m older, a year feels like a month. I remember days lasting longer than weeks. Years dragging on for decades. I had all the time in the world. Now I’m unable to remember when I last thought it was yesterday. Last week felt like yesterday. While yesterday feels like last week. At this rate a year will feel like yesterday. My life will flash before me just before I die.

It feels like I’ve lived through three thousand summers when I’ve only lived forty. But the thought of only having forty more is intimidating. Best make the most of it at least. We should appreciate every single moment and abide great comfort in every aspect that surrounds us. There’s a novel in every journey. A movie in every observation. Music in every sound. All you need is to be content with what you have. If you need to have things to feel content, then you’ll always be trying to acquire contentment. If you take an interest in life you will find it all the more interesting. The world around you is fascinating when you stop considering your place in it and immerse yourself in it. How much time do we waste in our finite hours when we should be feeling the breeze beneath the trees, experiencing, as opposed to observing, life? Instead of learning about nature we should be living amongst it. We should be involved rather than absolved from it. We should all be getting along and be content to live and enjoy the world around us. Life is to be lived. Enjoy the moment, like the honeybee on the flower. Instead of competing against others to be someone, discover nature and take an interest in the environment that surrounds you and you will find yourself being a part of something. Lose interest in yourself and become involved in the world around you and you’ll no longer be isolated. The more you observe, the more intimate you become with it. The more involved. Like our ancient ancestors who were fascinated and terrified of the world they observed in intricate detail.

	Things may seem better now, though they’re not. Our lives were far more simple and black and white. Now it’s all dazzling Technicolor where we’re spoilt for choice. No longer sure what to choose. We seemed so much happier then. To be excited and appreciative of hand me downs and be content with our lot- not discontented by what we haven’t got. When we would laugh at our own circumstances, not the circumstances of others, with that school yard attitude, picking on faults for the sake of searching. Never growing out of it. 

	Society’s like a spoilt child. Not appreciating anything. Not getting enthusiastic about anything. Wanting for nothing. Everything’s amalgamated into one big soup with hints of flavour. Chocolate bars and sweets were their own species. Now they’re hybridised, striving to take over the whole shelf space. Nothing is regarded as necessary, but rather fashionable. With the latest in thing being out of date once you’ve bought it. A few years ago, a new phone meant that it had an answering machine built in or that it was cordless. It was a purpose of convenience, not an accessory of fashion. And how we coped back then, without mobile phones and the internet, with red phone boxes and libraries. We were more talkative, before txt messaging became the shorthand for general conversation, supplementing our emotions with emojis. We’ve become so secluded that we can’t be by ourselves unless we’re beside ourselves. We’re more lonely because there’s too many people in our lives. Our private lives are for public perusal. Posting snaps and snippets of our lives edited like personal biopics. A movie running at twenty-four frames per second twenty-four hours a day. Creating ourselves in our own image. Made up of a collage of images where image is everything. Whether still images in magazines and posters or moving images of television and cinema. We carry mobile photographs and computer screens. Our attentions are defragmented, unable to concentrate for too long. Needing distractions and our minds to be occupied. 

Never in history has such an immense change occurred with such rapidity. The transmogrification between the all too real world of our grandparents and the virtual reality of our grandchildren. Where photography replaced the capturing of memories, bringing art to be conveyed in different ways beyond mere reproduction. Where painting is a depiction, an expression of the feeling, the photograph can reproduce the feeling. The photograph captures the moment. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but the words before and after the photo are lost. Were the words as good as the photo that presided? Was the moment really as good as it looked? Does it speak the truth or has my memories morphed the moment. In the picture, I’m smiling, but what lies behind that smile? Was I just smiling for the camera. Was I wishing I was in another place and time like I’m wishing I was back there now? The photo album, with carefully displayed polaroid’s, that you would carefully turn the pages, now replaced by a memory stick. What will become of our memories when they are preserved and embalmed in data?

	Everything is exemplary beyond novelty. Nothing is precious. I remember when you’d make your house a home, not a habitat. When the proprietor of the local store used to know your name and not just your face. When the doctor told you what was wrong instead of asking you what’s wrong. When a street was full of family and friends who’d lived their whole lives there. Not strewn with strangers you never get to know. When the whole street would be out clearing the snow from the road, not just from their own front gates. Back in the days when a snow fall would rise and ice would burn, and storms would sterilise and assault the senses. When the camaraderie would pull us through together instead of confining us to our personal space.

	I tread on, passed the brutal buildings like concrete fortresses made when things were built to last. Those picture postcard houses look like they were built by Jack but have withstood the test of time. A vitreous enamel sign swings above the antique store. The past paraded in the window when I pace the public space at night, as if wandering alone in a museum. My stilted shadows chase each other up the pebbled pavement of what was once the high street. Now lowly and derelict. The window displays, all boarded up buildings. I see the faded outline of a name of the old video store, revealed beneath the signs that were laid over it, like when stripped wallpaper in a room reminds you of how it used to be. Bringing a kind of bulkiness to your thoughts.

	I remember often going to those video rental stores where you’d hire a tape for the night. Spending an hour searching for something you hadn’t seen, before picking up their empty cases, which were themselves mini works of art. Waiting for one of the new releases. Getting really excited about seeing a movie you’d been wanting to watch for six to eight months because you couldn’t go see it at the cinema. Only for it to be returned late by an inconsiderate person who hadn’t even rewound it. Then you’d have to wait for what felt like the duration of a movie for it to spool back to the beginning, screeching in the VCR as it reached the end. And near the end of the film, you’d get the fuzzy white line scrawling up the screen. Making sure you returned it before seven the next day fully rewound. 

	 I miss those old days of VHS. Taping movies off the tv with snippets of the end and beginnings of programmes. Picking up on the conspicuous cuts of violence when they still dubbed profanity. Pausing the tape to cut out the commercial breaks with those title cards for the movies before they introduced the two lines in the top corner. When broadcasting a movie was an event. Yet taping movies off the tv meant you wouldn’t have the proper box with the cover on. What a work of art they were. The artwork of the covers made you prize the movie. You would place it on the shelf and treasure it. Now my movie collection is a set of pristine discs, all iridescent and shiny. But the DVD covers lack the original artwork. They’re packaged without the love. I miss the old scruffy recordable tapes with the penned over labels. 
I think back to the time I first watched Rumble Fish. That small poetic film by one of cinemas novelists. The beautiful contrast of black and white elongated shadows and oblique angles. This remains my most personal film. I intend to watch it once a year for the rest of my life. How I identified with the Motorcycle boy more than any other character in the movies, despite never having rode a motorbike. That Stewart Copland score blending with the photography was as gorgeous as Diane Lane with the wind in her hair to a guy that age. I remember the end credits rolling, followed by Alex Cox announcing the next weeks movie before the Arena credits rolled on top. I had recorded it off BBC2 late Saturday night. When television was something to switch on when there was a programme to watch, not something to switch off when there isn’t. When it was something of communal interest, not something of individual boredom. 

I remember when queues queued all down the street for movies that were something to see and not be seen. When films were regarded with such enthusiasm and esteem. When things used to actually happen. Before the get up and go became the get it and go. No-one seems to have the energy we used to have. With technology, time’s now catered for. We no longer make our own meals, prepare the fire, toast our toast under the grill, roast our potatoes on the hearth, wait for the whistle of the kettle. Home-made meals have been replaced by fast food microwaves, tiding ourselves over with tv dinners, no longer sitting around the dinner table as a family, all sitting around our own individual screens watching our own thing with civil inattention. Only playing board games when we’re really bored. With all these conveniences we have less to do and less time to do it in. Racing around without watching where we’re going, unable to sit back and reflect on what we’re doing. And when we do have time on our hands, we have to be on our feet, not knowing what to do with ourselves without wondering what everyone else is doing. 

I remember when cartoons were shown on a Saturday afternoon between the sport and the pool score draws. I remember seeing hopscotch grids drawn upon the pavements. I remember when people got married, they’d throw loose change out onto the road, and we’d scramble to pick it up, avoiding any traffic. Not that there was much traffic amongst the estates those days. Nowadays you can barely play across the streets for the amount of parked cars along them. I remember the chimes of the ice cream van almost every afternoon, tinkling down the road minding the children running for orange and lemonade lollies. When you could get a ninety-nine well under that price, topped with monkey blood and ground nuts. Nowadays almost every afternoon goes by without the bells ringing. 

Now I’m home the smell of soot from the chimney keeps the home fires burning in my mind, even though it’s never been alight in years. I remember when all the houses used to smoke from mid-autumn onwards. The charcoal fragrance would evoke the advent of winter and the thrill of knowing Christmas was on its way, and we would be soon having snowball fights, building snowmen, skating on ice. Now I’m old the ice freezes my fingers. When I was young it didn’t seem to bother me. Is it because my circulation isn’t what it was? Because I’m not as active? Or is it because when you’re young you tend not to fear that they may fall off, thinking it something that happens to other people, not you. That’s how  you felt about the elderly when you were young. Now I tend to scrape my feet across the carpet, as if the sheer weight of things makes them harder to lift. The spring in the step turned to a sprung mattress. Tired of being tired. Nodding off and on in front of the tv. Seeing only fragments of movies I watch in parts over and over. Having anticipated seeing for some time, having never seen in full. I used to watch films fully immersed, not impartially in parts, as I slump into the clunk of a chair looking affectionately towards my youth while disapproving the youth of today.

	Is it me? Is it the times? Is it me and the times? Should I look where I’m going instead of looking back? Is reminiscing a waste of time or time well spent?


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