Somewhat strangely these past six months or so I've been getting random flashbacks of things I did, people I knew, places I've been to and so on. Names sometimes fail me or if I remember them, they take me right back to events long since forgotten about.
There were some photographs online of places in London from the 70s and 80s and I recognised them as being, of that time and they feel as old to me now as say 1940s photos felt to me as a child. The thing is that the last time I was there, these places looked completely different to now. Of course, they will but then I realised, for example, that I hadn't been to Farringdon for about 25 years or more and places like Barbican also 30 years ago and of course, things will have changed. It's been the blink of an eye but when I remember back it has been 30 or more years and suddenly it just seems strange to me that I never really knew when the last time I visited these places was.
So by that, it means that we never know when it's the last time, do we? I recall driving to my parent's house and knowing that it was the last time I'd drive along that set of roads and to that particular house but when my father died I hadn't really worked out that it was the last time I would see him. A friend of mine and I were chatting at a bar just before lockdown and again, that was the last time I saw him he was tragically taken at a young age and we had only seen each other days before.
So it is with travelling and so on. I saw some photos of when I worked in Brussels and Paris, again, over 30 years ago now and realised that I'd probably never be there again (where I worked) I've been back to Paris and Brussels since but then I realised that was still some time ago!
When you unlock your memories of these times and places and indeed people you worked with it presents mixed emotions. Mixed in that I had various levels of relationships with them and they've just disappeared into nowhere. It's strange that I have very few connections back to those days and in some cases, I just lost touch and one day I was working with them closely and then I never saw or contacted them again. A couple of close people to me also went the same way and it disturbs me a bit that things just disappeared like that. How could it happen?
So it was really a strange thing to remember people and places today and over the past months. I'm not sure why this is? Regret maybe? Getting older and reflecting on that? The march of time maybe? Whatever it is, I do find that I regret that I didn't keep in touch with certain people and keep up friendships with a couple of people who really meant a lot to me. I don't know how I dropped them but a career change 32 years ago into an almost entirely different industry probably didn't help matters and I think getting ill 17 or 18 years ago also changed the landscape.
I still have friendships from 55 years ago with my old school chums and I need to work on that as I've drifted away over the past 6 months or more. Now I'm feeling on the up I hope that I will get back to some sort of "normality" if that is what it is.
It makes me think hard about these things as for instance, will I ever go back to Canada, Mauritius, Venice, Milan, Madrid, Paris and so on? I enjoyed them when I was there but did I ever think as I travelled away from these places that it would be the last time I'd see them?
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