Nostalgia

Following on from my slightly nostalgic post yesterday (wittering on about Harry Secombe and Sunday night hair washes), I've been feeling just that. Nostalgic. It's a funny word when you think about it. As is nostalgia. Hey ho.

Whatever happened to the sweets of my youth? I know you can still get cola bottles, blackjacks and fruit salads but they just don't taste the same. Where are the MoJo's? Nova bars? Space dust - which used to foam in your mouth especially if you helped it down with a mouthful of cream soda. And why doesn't Roast Beef Monster Munch taste the same as they did in my youth? They surely didn't taste synthetic back then? And Vimto - either it's changed, I've changed or it's always tasted like disinfectant.

And games! What about 40/40 in the street with your friends on muggy summer evenings while The Parents all watched telly and watered the garden. I can't exactly remember the fundamental rules but I know that it involved running, yelling and hiding behind trees. I do remember, however, old Mr and Mrs Gennie (they were in their late forties at the time!) blithering on about the dangers of running up and down the road wearing jellie shoes. Jellie shoes! Who remembers those? I had a sparkly pink pair for best and a red pair for going in and out of the sea when on holiday. Knock Down Ginger was a favourite as well, especially when we KDGingered the Gennie's during "It's a Knockout". Haha!


Then there was entertainment. Telly highlights included the Dukes of Hazzard, TJ Hooker, CHiPs, and at lunchtime (I came home from school for lunch) there were The Sullivans (the lives and loves of a war-torn family in Melbourne) and The Flumps (small lumps of brown fur on legs) I was obsessed with Pootle (the little one) and wanted to name my first child after him. I also used to want to be Daisy Duke and spent many a childhood afternoon being "rescued" by an invisible Bo or Luke whilst my friend Natasha did Sergeant Roscoe impressions. I also had a fancy for Adrian Zmed who played Vince in TJ Hooker - but then I saw him in Grease 2 which pretty much ruined any fantasies for me. Ditto with Erik Estrada and that blonde bloke from CHiPs. Not that I saw them in Grease 2 but I got fed up with their macho posturing as they sat astride their bikes and made sexist jokes. The original Grease was far superior and still holds a fond place in my heart....as does Dirty Dancing. How I longed to have anyone who looked like Patrick Swayze say to me "Nobody puts Baby in a corner". I was more used to being a wallflower at parties and always being one of the ones who helped tidy up afterwards. I always ended up with a dustpan and brush......

Boy Bands! Before they were called boy bands! Bros and New Kids on the Block. If you were a Bros fan you couldn't like NKOTB and vice versa. Rivalry was, er, rife. I wasn't bothered either way but was partial to humming "Cat among the Pigeons". A girl at school, Kelly, claimed that she knew the Bros boys personally as they used to live in Peckham, three doors along from her friend of an aunt. This was treated with a fair amount of derision by my fellow classmates but a good 11 of them went on a pilgramage to the boys' old house one day. Apparently, their mum gave them all a carton of Princes orange juice which I bet were never thrown away. Wham! How many of us girlies lusted after George and his quiff, not noticing the rather soulful Andrew Ridgeley behind him strumming a guitar? How many of us girlies felt cheated when George came out and Andrew went in, never to be seen again.

Rubik's cubes! I nearly broke my fingers twisting and clicking away for hours on that wretched thing. It was an obsession, trying to get all the coloured sides lined up! You could get different shaped ones, as well as square and I had them all. You could hear me coming as I clicked, cursed and fumbled away. We used to have Rubik's cube challenges at school - one corner of the playground sounded like a grasshopper and cricket orgy as we all tried our hardest to outdo our contemporaries. Until one day, Nicholas stunned us all. He stood up, pleaded for silence and then, from behind his back, brought out a completed Rubiks cube. It was a pivotal moment. We knew he'd done it "his way" because I saw him with it that very morning in the milk queue and it was all jumbled up. He became a God-like figure and the afternoon was spent gazing at him in awe. Until he was rumbled. He'd thrown it on the floor in frustration and it fell apart - how easy it was for him to put it back how it should be!

Ah........I've set Saskia, Eliza and Charlie off now - Saskia is hooting even now with laughter as she remembers me pretending to be Daisy Duke at a school jumble sale "foiling" the evil headmistress in her dastardly plan, along with the invisible Bo and Luke and ending up pulling the entire contents of the White Elephant stall down on top of me. Thanks to the wonder of Sky I can relive my Dukes of Hazzard and CHiPs days whenever I feel like it - Mackenzie enjoys them too. David thinks I'm crazy but is everso slighly engrossed when Daisy Duke appears on screen. He claims it's because he's looking for the certain similarities between her and me. Hm.

I've Googled "nostalgia" and came up with this which in turn, when searching for space dust, I found this. It's well worth a look!!!