Nostalgia

As my blog was only here in my 40s, I wondered what I'd have done had it been around all my life. Here are three possible entries from the last three decades.

1995

Work in the shop is the same as usual (since 1992), the customers are still rude, treat me like a moron, and want stuff at cost price. It still pays the bills and is a lot easier than most others I've done so I will put up with it and at least know I'm actually qualified to do a lot more than that if I ever had to. Otherwise I'm collecting the last knockings available of the old Edmondson card train tickets British Rail took out of regular use in 1988. Apart from the Isle of Wight Ferry the only ones elsewhere are handwritten free passes, but at least I can still drive around the country as I always have searching for them.

1985

I just started teaching law three afternoons a week in a private college. Nearly everyone in the class is called Patel, but at least everyone's reasonably well behaved, and the mature Nigerian students help keep them all in line as they're paying their own fees and don't want to be interrupted. They might turn up in Mercedes compared to my old Triumph Dolomite, but at least I'm the one doing the teaching. I've also joined a few agencies, and travel around coaching law students, and have discovered the plethora of Indian snacks, especially their spiced tea, masala chai, which does far more with tea than we ever do here.

Having dumped the series of last-resort girlfriends I was thrown together with during my degree as I didn't have the time to look properly, I've discovered now I am free to look all the nice ones became paired off while I was otherwise engaged, and now I'm going to have to find other ways to meet them. I am seeing a perfect looking woman who I see as more of a friend while she isn't seeing anyone, but has very little to say for herself. I've never seen anyone more exactly what I would call what I like the best, but in the action department she isn't prepared to offer very much in the way of material, though anything is a thousand times better with her than everything with many others. But I'm going to have to look at some new places to meet them now, including replying to adverts. Now I've got the time I want to be able to make the best of it.

1986 PS

Having discovered only upper second degrees get grants/research offers, I'd been given the options of either a full time degree in Hull or Cardiff (blimey!) at a massive cost plus a year's rent on top of that, or study two evenings a week at the old Polytechnic locally. As I had already started a reasonable job I took the cheap option but my health packed up after a couple of months at it, and have now started my first interest, counselling, one morning a week which fits into my work schedule a lot better. It was what I wanted to do since secondary school, so though the masters degree is now off the agenda at least I'll be able to do something I'd been doing for friends, and quite successfully, for years.

1975

The majority of life is concentrated at weekends, having recently discovered discos. As well as joining a couple of new youth clubs, I go to every disco advertised, and every so often get quite lucky. The highlight was our youth club disco, where I had danced with and then had 6 girls walk away and I'd run out of material by 9.30. I went to the loo and when I came out someone new had just arrived, who was better than any of them. She did NOT walk away after a dance or two, and she is exactly the best and most suitable one I've ever met. After a month apart while I was on holiday, we had our second set of two weeks of seeing each other, where I discovered her mind is actually equal to her looks, and there is nothing at all wrong with her. BUT after taking her to my grandma's new house, across the fields from where she lives, we got back late and this was the excuse her mother had been looking for to make her stop seeing me. Game over. Back to the discos. The new O level marks were allocated for my first go at them, and it took days to realise I'd failed all but one as I didn't understand the new grades. So apart from English language I took early I still only have two! Luckily they were all taken a year early anyway so it wasn't any great loss and I'll do them all again in January.

PS 1976

Resits in January yielded a total of six O levels, I left school and returned for 2 weeks in June to retake physics, which totalled seven altogether when I passed it (just!).

Back to 2005

Once I'd reached the end, I was almost writing in the present, I was really back there. Maybe I should base most of my blogs in the past, and then I can also only select the good bits...