First thoughts on sunshine and memory
As I can scarcely remember what sunshine looks and feels like I thought I would hold forth on the subject of memory itself, as a realm richly resonant of sunshine. Sunshine is often both agent and subject of the remembered past. As I put it in the book (in my favourite chapter, as it happens), the mind recollects what it collects and has a magpie's eye for the shiny stuff.
I'm off on this theme because, as it's getting close to back-to-school time, I was struck at how spectacularly cheated the little darlings have been of the stuff that traditionally preserves pleasant childhood memories and nurtures some widely-held delusions. The summer gave out just at the very moment school did, and the sun has scarcely shown its face for the whole time they have been off. As I walk past an empty school yard each morning, and see the overflowing drains clogged with damp leaves and crisp packets (not to mention discarded knives, syringes, and AK-47s - I live in the East End), I share their outrage, and wonder if this, added to the complete washout of last year, will prevent this generation subscribing to the popular delusion that the sun shone more when we were young.
Those with young 'uns might get them to sign testimonies that this summer and the last were decidedly pants, and, if they ever feel inclined to subscribe to the popular delusion in later life, these statements can be used as evidence to the contrary. According to Bill Bryson, the belief that “British summers used to be longer and sunnier” is one of the “idiosyncratic notions you come to accept when you live for a long time in Britain”.I've talked to Americans (from the South), Australians and Italians about this, and they have no idea what I'm talking about. And it's easy to see why, there is no need for nostalgia if you have a reliable and abundant supply. A bit like talking about the weather at all. 'Nice day' is a rather pointless observation if all or most days are nice, and this counts retrospectively too. But nearly all Brits share a belief that the official records refute. According to Met Office records (the past they can do quite reliably, it's the future and even the present that they find tricky), the last 2 decades have actually seen more sunshine (hard though it is to believe at the moment), than the decades of our youth. That's why I'm entertaining the notion of signed testimonies during what is clearly a setback in the blissful picture the experts derisively dangle before us.
For I believe the simple fact of greater exposure is one reason why we of a certain age believe the sun shone more when we were young. (I actually don't. Obsessed with sunshine from an early age, I've always had more exacting demands from the heavens, and can recall being indignant at summers not unlike this one even as a nipper). But for most people it's probably down to a simple aggregate of sunlit exposure. Most of us now spend the majority of our time in doors during the day, entombed in corporate prisons. That leaves weekends to see the sun, and sod's law says it won't be there when we are. When we were young, we finished school at 3.30, probably walked home (paedophiles hadn't been invented then); had morning and afternoon playtimes, and didn't spend our lunch 'hours' munching a sarnie chained to our desks, but frisking happily outside. And of course we had six whole weeks in the summer to at least up our quota. We simply increased the odds that some of those days might be sunny. The sun wasn't out more in the past, we were. (This is perhaps the most prosaic reason for this link between sunshine and memory. There is more to say, certainly, and I will recall what I have to say when I can recall what sunshine is. Does anyone remember? Does anyone remember waking up and seeing a sky of blue? Answers on a postcard, UK residents only.)
5 comments:
I know for a fact that summers are always off the scale hot whenever I am pregnant. When I had Oscar (he will be two in October)I distinctly recall spending large swathes of my summer lying on the lounge floor with the windows open, curtains drawn, panting like a dying dog.
When Tilly was born (99) It was so hot that I remember carrying her around Camden market when she was two weeks old. She was smartly clad only in a nappy and a sun hat.
When Tallulah was born (03) I fainted from the heat and had to be carried out of the supermarket in a fireman's lift.
I am no longer willing to have babies to ensure good summers, but you could give it a go :)
Yes, katyboo, even *I* can vouch that your 2003 summer was pretty warm & sunny. July - August, I spent just over 4 weeks in London, LLangollen & on the saddle of a mountain near Betws Garmon, Liverpool, then London again.
The only day it was really overcast & raining was the day that my Welsh rellies had planned to take me up Mt Snowdon.
Ah, those lovely warm evenings, footing it from Paddington to Kensington Gardens, with Oz almonds in my pockets to feed squirrels.
annoymous, please don't rub it in. it's hard enough for me not to despair at the memory that was 2003 - as Andre Gide said, nothing kills happiness like the memory of past happiness - when measured against the misery of this year (yet another day confronts us with wall-to-wall, horizon-to-horizon, grey. it's like some evil sinister manipulator of our lives has decreed that Trueman Show dome in which we live will have this back drop for the foreseeable future). but i think it's rather unfair that visitors from Oz should visit on the years when we actually have summers. this can't be good for their sense of reality, or their happiness in the fact that they live somewhere where even their winters are better than our summers. it's simply wrong that you should experience the anomaly of 2003. you have more than your fair share. if i had my way we'd have some sort of exchange. when ever you guys express the belief that it's 'too hot', or, 'i'm bored with that blue thing overhead with the bright yellow feature, why can't we sample some of that wet grey stuff', there should be a great two-way tunnel through which we send you some of ours in exchange for some of yours. coming here when ours looks like yours will set back any hopes of establishing such a scheme. and you're about to go into spring as we slip into winter before we've even had a summer. (sorry. i'm not coping very well am i?)
Oh dear. My intention was not to provoke further upset.
You must allow me some nostalgia for the greenth of old Blighty. Of anglo-flemish extraction, I migrated with my parents to Oz when I was six. My father's engineering skills being in much demand, he thrived, but my mother was homesick for years. It washed onto me, I think. I love both the eucalypt & the oak.
and i must apologise to anonymous for sounding off so tetchily. i can't imagine what came over me. yes. i can. permanent cloud cover. but as a resident of the blessed realms of plenty down below do you confirm that this belief that the sun shone more when we were young is a wholly British notion? (i suppose it might be shared by Germans and Dutch etc.). or did your 6 years in Blighty mean your memory banks are confused? and if you mean to say you are nostalgic for green, and Aussies sit around waxing nostalic that the rain rained more when they were young, and sighing wistfully at the happy thought then please keep it to yourself. it would be more than my fragile nerves could cope with at the moment.
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