Nostalgia for a time I never knew

I am a mega-geek about what I call ‘domestic history’. Well, except that I have never actually bothered to find out if that’s the real term, until now… and it turns out I was right. I like that about me.

I think it’s so much more interesting how people lived at at particular time in history than what specific date a military coup occurred, for example.

Two of my favourite museums are the Castle Museum at York and Eden Camp in North Yorkshire, in both cases because of the focuses on what people were doing day to day - in the former’s case I love the Victorian Street and the living rooms through history, and for the latter, well, I have always been obsessed with rationing so the fact there’s a whole exhibit devoted to it makes my frugal little heart sing every time I visit.

One of my first memories of loving this ‘domestic’ part of history was Year 7 or 8, in History (as you might expect), when we were learning about the Black Death. I don’t remember the dates that it ‘swept across Europe’ (although I clearly remember that it ‘swept’ rather than ‘spread’, I don’t know why). I obviously remember that rats got a terrible rep, when plot twist fleas were the real super-villains. And I remember that it was a deciding factor in dismantling the Feudal system in Britain, a fact that gripped my imagination because my fascination with Serfdom and the agrarian, manorial society of the time has never fully left me.

***WARNING: here follows (another) Coronavirus-related ramble, for approx. a paragraph; skip if required to return to scheduled book-related programming.***

We’re currently living through an example of domestic history that might be taught, generations in the future, in a similar way to the Black Death, feasibly. It’s clearly wildly different, in the sense that we don’t have a Feudal system anymore (at least, that’s what they’d have you believe, wink wink), but it will be in many ways just as fascinating to see what systems do get dismantled globally, and what the impact will be on future History curricula.

But as with all historical periods, the act of living through something is often somewhat different in practice than it is in memory. I don’t, to be clear, think it was very pleasant to live through the period leading up to the Black Death, even if you were wealthy. Nor do I pine for WW2 just because I’m partial to a reproduction ration book, and I sincerely hope the current situation we live in won’t be used by future generations to prove ‘how great things used to be’. God, it feels absolutely ludicrous to be even saying that, and yet…

***Ok, that was 2 paragraphs. Don’t worry, it’s over now!***

…I’ve heard a lot about the 70s, as I’ve grown up. Now, for the benefit of My Teenager (she’s called G, she’s eighteen and she lived with me for two years before I moved to London via a charity and I strongly suspect that I will refer to her as My Teenager until she’s about 42) and any other younger readers, I am twenty years too young to have seen any of the 70s. Things I know about it include:

• They liked orange and brown together, often on ceramics

• Telly was not yet ‘good’ and was most often instead ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’

• There was some weather that was considered notable

• 3 day weeks (but don’t ask me exactly what that means)

I mean, to me it doesn’t sound much cop, and yet when surveyed, a whole heap of Britons suggested that the 70s were, in fact, the Good Old Days. They’re only beaten by the 80s and 90s. Actually, funnily enough, that survey also shows people tend to think the Good Old Days were when the respondents were… well, young. Children to mid-twenties, in fact: apparently we’re hardwired to feel nostalgia for the times we were young.

That’s not, however, how my mother remembers it (she was a child/young teen in the ‘70s, so I suppose she’s the perfect candidate to do one of those surveys).

I sent her a message and asked what she remembers, and she said:

“Bay City Rollers, Howden Carnival and the May Queen crowning, working at Mayphil Cafe, babysitting, and meeting your Dad.”

I didn’t ask if she thinks the ‘70s are the Good Old Days because, I mean, Bay City Rollers?! And as for meeting my Dad, they’ve been divorced since 1996 so I’m not sure that’s such a ringing endorsement either.

But I digress. Back to me.

And people like me, and G, and all her young friends (bless ‘em, those poor creatures are going to be nostalgic for 2015)? How can we possibly learn to be nostalgic for the 70s, a time we’ve never seen or experienced outside of phenomenal BBC series called things like Back In Time For Dinner (which you should all watch, if like me your tastes in reality television are only very slightly too highbrow and British for Keeping Up With The Kardashians)?

Well, maybe we don’t all need to develop anemoia for the 70s; maybe ‘nostalgia’ isn’t exactly right - but I think we do need to develop some kind of… empathy? Maybe? For times that have passed, times we won’t ever experience. If I can be forgiven for a moment for returning to our current predicament; what empathy are we learning right now for epidemics past? I certainly feel that given the number of times I’ve heard newscasters say things like ‘these are unprecedented times’ when these times are realistically anything but unprecedented tells us it’s important we develop nostalgia/empathy/care for our collective history.

It likely won’t surprise anyone reading this to learn that the way I think we should handle this is… by reading. This, to me, is what story is for: taking us to times, to places, to a sense of nostalgia, or at least empathy, for something we can have no other way of experiencing.

So I shall, this week, be reading Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy, a book set in the ‘70s, during that heatwave in 1976 that all other heatwaves are judged by.

Everyone I’ve seen online who’s read this loved it, so I’m excited to dive into this witchy, ‘folk horror’ version of the ‘70s.

I’ll let my mum know if there are any May Queen crownings when I’ve finished.