TOT: Weeping for long-gone days

I?ve had a cold; a common-or-garden, not-very-severe but nevertheless quite pesky cold. It?s well known that the common cold is a great modifier of mood; in fact some experts say we?re all slightly mad when we have a cold and shouldn?t drive or ?make important decisions?. Colds and other infections always have me on an emotional roller-coaster, but I forget about this from one event to the next so it always catches me unawares. This time I was agreeably anaesthetised from reality during the worst few days, thanks to various substances. But on the morning when I started to feel better I noticed that I was rather more jolly than usual. I put this down to the fact that the runny nose, sore throat, painful chest, and mouth ulcers were becoming less troublesome.

In the afternoon I was positively buzzing with happiness and contentment. But this wasn?t the lifting of mood?s baseline that I imagined, it was an amplification of mood; a turning up of the temperamental gain to 11. I was very happy and cheerful because it was a vaguely happy and cheerful day. Amplification, of course, cuts both ways. That evening some innocent fool on the internet mentioned the wartime BBC radio programme ?Music While You Work?, and a worse fool, me, went to You Tube in search of it. The programme continued through the 1950s and was very popular at home as well as in the workplace.

Now I have to say that to many of us of a certain age, that signature tune will always be highly evocative, but because of my high gain emotional state this time it was something else again. When the long-ago band struck up with that achingly-familiar, oh-so-jaunty signature tune I was a sitting duck, and I got both barrels. Suddenly I was a little pre-school lad in my mother?s kitchen, the old Marconi wireless booming out until its knobs rattled as she washed and baked and cleaned.

Memories of mum flooded back, how she sat me on her knee and taught me to read by means of the Daily Mirror, how she made such fantastic buns ? all the usual stuff we remember about our old mums. I remembered the half-built sidecar in the front room, the exciting smell of new library books, the Beano dropping through the letterbox. Under this onslaught I was quite unable to continue as normal, so I went somewhere where I could be alone, except for the chickens, and dealt with myself as best as I could.

Even old people miss their beloved dead. My sadness was immense, but it wasn?t simply for the loss of my mum. It was for the loss ? the irretrievable loss ? of a time now long gone, a time in my life and a time in Britain?s history. A time when many things were much worse than they are now, but when many other things were much better.

In my extreme old age (if I?m lucky enough to have one) I will remember my mother, and I will remember the Britain of the 1950s, and I will mourn for both. Meanwhile I?m looking for a box set of ?Listen with Mother?.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright
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It's called "Bi-polar disorder" Bill. You need to see the Quack ;-)

You're going/gone mad.

Reply to
harry

Ah, the chime bar intro, and the Berceuse by Faure in piano version as the playout...............

Don't forget 'Puffing Billy' and Uncle Mac..............

Them were't days.

Reply to
Woody

Being similarly old and daft I have a copy of a 2 CD set titled after "Uncle Mac's" "Hello Children... everywhere" which includes Puffin Billy (as spelt), etc, etc.

EMI EM1307 / CDS 7 91255 2

However it was a 1988 release. So even nostalgia may have moved on since then!

Jim

Reply to
Jim Lesurf

I'd go along with that. I often find I am buzzing just before I go down with a cold, and I put it down to side effects of the immune system gearing up to fight the nasty interloper, which of course most of the nasty symptoms we get are mainly the debris from the battle. The mood swings happen when the effect of the chemicals dies away, a bit like cold turkey for a drug you are getting used to. I often used to find that a good massage made me elated, but then later on I had a drop to below normal, and I was I suspect getting addicted to endorphins. As for times gone by, yes, I agree, but... we cannot go back and the memories are tainted by multiple recall modification so the painful parts are harder to get at, which is why we only notice them when we are digging deep I suspect. Fro me it was the hatred of school and so called teaching that went on. I learned a heck of a lot more from my Granny and watching early racing on the Telly etc, than the crackpot maths tasks and Janet and john crap at school.

I do remember good times, such as my first short wave radio, which my father built for me so I could wind my own coils and see where it tuned, and the wonderful neon oscillators that made buzzing and other sounds, the day trip out to Brookmans park where you could hold big neon lights near things that made them glow (Elf and safety?) I do worry about the children of today. I recently went to Bletchley Part where they were half way through a revamp. they were taking all the bits of gear you could handle and operate out of the junk shop looking shed they were being used in, and shoving them all behind glass with labels and a suited drone to explain them. I think that is sad.

As for the death of parents, yes, I lost my father far too young in a heart attack. Of course nowadays they would have fixed him up with stents, but they did not have the know how in 74. Now I have lost too much sight to appreciate the old pictures and indeed places very much, but one cannot go back, so you either adapt or you go round the twist. I suspect I have done a bit of both!

Brian

Reply to
Brian-Gaff

No I don't think so. Bipolar is just the mood thing on a hair trigger near the normal range. IE one little change and it flips.

I notice other changes between being ill and ok. its the bleedin obvious filter problem. as Paul Simon wrote. When something goes wrong, I'm the first to admit it, the first to admit it, but the last one to know.

I'm a bit like that in any case, but its really amplified when I get ill. .

I just remember the very helth and unsafe things we did on the way to Brookmans park. We, that is a friend and myself sat in the back of my dads van on the floor cross legged, and when the breaks were applied we slid forward, and when we had to accelerate, we went and hit the back doors.

Can you imagine anyone being allowed to do that today? Brian

Reply to
Brian-Gaff

Bugger your problems. I have to avoid the Archers Theme because it cause a Pavlovian response , the moment I hear that music I end up checking my shoes are clean, washing behind my ears ,cleaning my teeth and going to bed.

G.Harman

Reply to
damduck-egg

I also remember Edmundo Ross, Victor Sylvester, and workers playtime as well as the ones in the original post. Radio Luxumbourg faded in and out all night with a more up to dat format, andalso all the Irish stations you could listen to and hear about a sport called Hurling. What they hurled was never quite clear to me.

AFN was suitably American with blatent propoganda bigging up the American way to the poor folk stuck in germany, as well of course. Back in those days one could listen to police onan ordinary fm radio, and fire as well. That is all gone since they went digital.

That wonderful hot dropper smell of radios with bakalite cabinets that had a bulge where the dropper was, and of course the side illuminated ground dial that looked really smart with its station names.

Of course when I tried one of these a couple of yearsago, all one got was hash from nasty power suupplies and lighting etc, and it was pretty depressing. Three knobs. On offvol tuning and band switch. The cheap early ones just had medium and long with a double ended pointer. The posh 1960 versions had fm as well but the dial had to be redesigned to allow three baands, so it was long and driven by a bit of string. Whoever invented string dials needs to be shot. Brian

Reply to
Brian-Gaff

Sudden mood swings have been associated with other brain chemistry problems and need investigating as there is treatment available to slow some of the deterioration down.

Reply to
dennis

The problem US troops had in Germany was that most never mixed with the locals. They lived in US ghettos.

Reply to
Martin

While you're still looking, I can't recommend this highly enough for a further and very entertaining trip down memory lane back to the same time:

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Reply to
Norman Wells

that would bring a tear to a glass eye .....I bought my yoof back from ebay .......

Reply to
Jimbo ...

A nice turn of phrase but technically inaccurate...'glass' (acrylic these days) eyes do have tears!

I should know...

Reply to
Bob Eager
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I'm not sure if we're allowed to bleed all over uk.d-i-y, and maybe poetry is not your thing. Mostly it isn't mine, except that there are some strong emotions which I don't myself know how to express.

But Tennyson wrote a few lines which strike a chord in me. 'So sad, so strange, the days that are no more' ...... 'Oh death in life, the days that are no more'.

Or:

'And I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me' ...... 'Oh well! for the sailor lad, as he sings in his boat on the bay; Oh well! for the fisherman's son as he laughs with his sister at play'.

What I remember is Larry the Lamb, and Just William. It must have appealed to the anarchist in me :-)

Reply to
Windmill

Uncle Mac the kiddie fiddler?

Reply to
Martin

Brian - I bet that many of us can still remember the far away place-names on the tuning dials.

Reply to
DerbyBorn

I never really understood what or where Hilversum was.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

Are we still living under an austerity plan ?

Reply to
Phi

Martin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

In any case, AFN didn't target German audiences at all, neither did BFBS. The German service of the BBC World Service was for that.

Reply to
Wolfgang Schwanke

snipped-for-privacy@gowanhill.com wrote in news:3039bc93-849c-453f-a328- snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

didn't you get the Atlas out to find it?

Reply to
DerbyBorn

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