NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Nostalgia. Is it a wimpish retreat into a bygone age, a celebration of what has gone before or just a plain old symptom of being a sentient human being who can look back as well as look forward? Maybe it is all three? I'm always mindful of Spike Milligan's take on the subject, an obsessive nostalgianarian (I may have just made up that word). He wrote something along the lines of - 'do we always look back in time because the present is troubling, the future is uncertain but the past is a known quantity' - some thing like that. I'm also drawn to the final line in F Scott Fitzgerald's novel 'The Great Gatsby' which is 'so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past'. I wish I'd written that. Almost as good as 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe' - I'll stop there before I go full flow into a response such as... "a quarter of a million hirundines fleeing the Kent coast and heading...

Spike Milligan summed up the human need for nostalgia quite succinctly, and it went something like - "With the present so troubling, and the future so uncertain, the past is a warm place that holds no fears at all". Looking back in time and turning over the leaves of the past is something that I am quite comfortable in doing.  I do know some who shun such activities, that want to live in the present and not 'project' themselves back (or forward) in their minds. To unearth events that have happened to us can stir many emotions - feelings of loss, a reminder of lessons learnt, a warm glow of joy, sadness that we are no longer the young carefree individual - but as we possess a memory it is strange to me that we don't all embrace it. Speaking for myself I am selective in what I revisit and am more than aware that those moments that I select are heavily lit by a rosy glow. They are worth more to me than any physical possession. I don't just embrace them, I celeb...

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." That is the final sentence from F Scott Fitzgerald's book 'The Great Gatsby' . In my humble opinion it is one of the finest 'last lines' in literature - economic in structure and oh so true. Why do so many of us reminisce and frequently visit the land of nostalgia? This is not something that everybody that I know indulges in. Some people shun it at an act of neediness or a clear sign that the present is not fulfilling enough. I quite enjoy wallowing in the past, and find myself doing so as a celebration of happy times - notice I didn't use the word 'happier'. Today's good moments will, with the passage of time, become tomorrow's nostalgia. When I look back at my own cherished 'natural history' moments, very few are about rarity. They are largely about feeling at peace, at ease or at one with a place, with the plants, birds and/or insects becomi...