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.)
