Even Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

There’s a nostalgia festival been held here recently. It’s held every year and is usually bunches of fun. There’s hotrods, rock and rollers, cover bands, market stalls and to top it all off – Elvis impersonators!! Last year they even had a Vegas style Chapel O’Love where couples could renew their vows, officiated by an Elvis and a Marilyn.

It’s all a bit silly and a good time. The trouble is, I find I’m getting nostalgic for things I didn’t get to experience the first time around!! It seems a bit unfair to me really and totally bass-ackwards, but there it is.

One of the big problems is the music. There’s some great music out there and quite a lot of it has a few decades on me in age. It’s hard not to listen to it then think “Wow! Imagine how cool it would have been to see them live.” Some of the bands are still kicking around, often with a little more restraint than they’d have shown fifty or sixty years previously. But as it happens, if you go to one of these gigs, they’re full of people the same age as the band saying “You've really missed out you know, they were even better back in the 60’s and the 70’s!”

You see, only young rockers actually die, usually at 27 if urban myths are to be believed. Old rockers just end up looking as though they’ve been tanned and cured and turned into leather. Keith Richards is now so pickled and preserved that he’ll never die, he’ll probably just explode from the pressure of all that music running through him.

However, I digress. The nostalgia thing. It wasn’t something I thought much about till I married Captain Barnacle. I always felt a little like I’d missed out, but hey, it was no big deal. Then I went and married a man who not only was around in those now nostalgia-ridden days, but did all the coolest stuff!!

People sometimes ask if I notice the age difference between us, and truth to tell, I don’t. It’s only a number and it doesn’t mean anything. Except of course for when he’s telling an anecdote about some great band he saw and then I get insanely jealous cos not only did I not see them, but even worse, I never had the chance to see them!

Things are as they are, I’m happy and I wouldn’t change anything. For a start, all those sci-fi stories warning about accidentally meddling with causality give me nightmares. I just can’t help wondering what it would have been like if I’d been of an age to meet him when we were both young and crazy.

Like I said, I get nostalgic for the things I didn’t actually get to be a part of the first time around.