Nostalgia

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore: -
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more

(Wordsworth)

nostalgia - noun from the Greek : nostos return [home] + algos pain

so: a longing to return to a place or time

Prompted by a visit from a former boyfriend, (together with his wife and family) I began to consider the nature of nostalgia. (The ‘boyfriend’ of course was no more a boy than I am a girl, it being 30 years since we last saw each other, and I’m afraid I find him as irritating now as I did at the end of our relationship!)

But it brought back many nostalgic feelings from my life in London, where I worked at that time as a Housekeeper at a District Nurses’ Home round the corner from the British Museum. I still look on the Bloomsbury area as ‘my London’.

Surrounded as I was then by all the glories of London, what I loved most were the smaller, almost trivial things:

Not so much the mighty British Museum, but close by the Georgian terrace house bearing a brass plaque saying ‘Registered Office - London Symphony Orchestra’ - that really thrilled me - occasionally one would see a musician going in carrying perhaps a violin or an oddly-shaped French-horn case - wow, the big time!

Then again, a friend and I relishing the huge treat of Hot Chocolate and thickly sliced toast at the small ‘Monaco’ café in Great Russell Street.

I smile at the memory of the aforementioned boyfriend and I competing to play a Scarlatti sonata the fastest, on his rather honky-tonk piano.


Or exploring the City of London alone, looking for Dickensian associations: Cornhill - this was where Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit went down a slide ‘at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve…’

Self (left) and friend at Monument in the City c.1967. Eating again!

My flatmate and I again in a café, Jackson’s in Marchmont Street (now alas altered out of all recognition) having cottage cheese and pineapple open sandwiches - thought to be rather chic at the time! Perched on stools at the window, we look across to the window opposite and see our café’s name reflected - after that our favourite place is ‘Snoskcaj’.

Visits to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall - and waiting at the end for Colin Davis’s autograph - swoon !- (and another time, Jack Brymer’s). The flip side of these trips to Kensington, after I had moved to Belsize Park, was having to get the late-night-pukers bus back, which went through Camden Town just as the pubs were emptying! Rather spoilt the magical atmosphere which still hovered around my head after the concert.

And another adventure which one could rarely afford - visiting the newly opened Pizza Express in Coptic Street (only the second branch to open, I think). It was so novel eating in a white-tiled former dairy, with bare marble-topped tables, and on Tuesdays (or was it Saturdays) a student string-quartet serenading us with Haydn and Mozart.

All those things make me smile, but the sadness I sometimes feel is not a mourning for the places, or even for the people - they all still exist .


But I mourn for my young self. She has gone for ever.