A Long Time Ago.......
For a while now have wanted nothing more , than to be able to fall backwards into the arms of the past. To stay there and feel as I did at that exact time.
A feeling came upon me, that was followed by an Internet search,which led me to finding something that meant the eternal nine year old inside me would never be silenced until he was appeased . Endless looking and dreaming eventually led to a stilted conversation about paying an extortionate amount of money , for what is basically a toy. I had backed my argument up with the well timed fact that my birthday is approaching ,41 not 9, and if that were to fail,I was prepared to go as far as to explain the abstract idea I've carried around in my head for over 30 years about one day building my own unique to scale version of the said item.
I have before now imagined myself as one of those vaguely confused old men who would appear on Blue Peter with a 1:16th Bismark or a fully working version of the Big Ben clock tower made from matchsticks.
How long had they carried those ideas around with them ?
What conversations had taken place over their kitchen tables? How many patience of saints were tested by the those, whose desire to recreate or build something in the shed could no longer be denied?
As it turned out I needn't have worried.The foolishness was given the all clear, the circumstances, I've been informed, will always gall. Paying the same amount of money for a link to the past as we would for plastering that needs doing will never sit right. As I pointed out when sitting looking at my prize "I don't expect you to understand why I would want this, ever" .
I was met with a simple but wonderful response"No, but I understand you" .
The child inside, the one who would stand in the dark by his Mum and Dad's bed, waiting for the sound of his breathing to wake them rather than speak still sees himself as an island a little too much sometimes. The fact that others understand me still surprises me.
All of this though, is still somehow in the background to the actual feelings I've been having.
Walking past an old friend's house the other evening, I was suddenly filled with a great sense of loss and longing. The thought of saying his name over and over until he appeared came into my head . I've not seen him since he was 12 and I had heard that he'd died. I've never tried to find out, well not properly. I suppose the mixture of sunshine, living where I grew up and never really wanting to grow up sometimes catches me out. I am, at heart, a child. Not childish, I do actually have a responsible and useful job, but child like sometimes in my looking at life and how it works.There is a down side to this in that I always feel that my expectations and ideas about things are way out of proportion with what is actually possible in life.
To compensate. I have grown a hard shell over my Idealistic heart.
As is my nature, the cost of the item doesn't concern me, I am a little frivolous at times when it comes to "grown up " realities, it's far outweighed by the sense of delight and magic I get when I transport myself back to a certain time, a certain frame of mind that seems depressingly scarce in this adult world of concerns and problems we find thrust upon us.
Too many of us associate being a child with being childish, it's not by any means. The ability to look at things and have that sense of wonder about it all, that sense of magic and connection with everything around you is far too rare. Life can grab people and smack them in the face until they give up. It doesn't take much sometimes and I've met many people who would call me a fool for thinking as I do and rightly so.
I have to ask the question though,would different circumstances make me a different person? Would a different upbringing have made me a different person or would I still have had that voice in my head that guides me...well,sometimes.
I can only suppose that I would be me what ever the situation. I'd hope so.
Any way, I'm off to do The Kessel Run again, for old times sakes....
