Written by Frederica

 

The current times are certainly challenging!  The daily diet of gloom, despondency and joblessness is sapping the will and resolve of even the most hardy and resilient of us all. 

Those who are in the driving seat of governance are blatantly doing everything possible to destroy the peace and tranquility of the Nation.  They are heedlessly disregarding the mental anguish that they are causing.  Additionally, their actions are steering the Country into the abyss of an irredeemable debt burden that will bankrupt businesses and impoverish those who are least able to weather the storm of the financial crash that is certainly beginning to look probable.

Like many others I cannot help looking backward to times past when everything seemed so ordinary and ‘normal’. Even when a ‘crisis’ occurred (and who doesn’t remember having some of those crop up from time to time!) there always seemed to be a resolution forthcoming and an eventual silver lining to what had appeared to be a very dark cloud:

Don’t look back the wise ones say 

Keep your focus forward and live from day to day

But the present days have become almost unbearable and certainly incomprehensible. There seems to be nothing of logic or sense to which the mind may relate and find stability.  It seems so tempting to hark back to earlier times when it was all so simple:

Then memories are seductive

They are the Lorelei

How much we took for granted!  We might well have groused and griped about taxation; price increases; paying the mortgage when there always seemed to be too much month left at the end of the money.  But, withal, we were not oppressed. 

We probably read the news or watched TV reports about how uncomfortable and constrained life was in countries behind the ‘Iron Curtain’.  Reading about the privations of daily life and the restrictions to liberty, we felt pity for the poor souls who had no recourse to a mechanism for ridding themselves of their oppressors.  We at least had the opportunity to rid ourselves of unsuccessful or overweening governments.  At that time there was, at least, a recognisable difference between the political parties and there was a credible sense of ‘opposition’ from the party that was currently ‘out of office’!.

Yet here we are.  We have sleepwalked ourselves into allowing the politicians and the Establishment to bring us to the self-same pass as those unhappy lives we had viewed in passing over the cornflakes or the evening meal.

So now I am going to indulge in some reveries of my own of past times that now take on the golden radiance of joyful memory.

My schooldays were never threatened by intrusive government decree.  The worst I had to worry about was keeping out of trouble with vengeful school teachers should I have the temerity to step out of line in some childish misdemeanour.  Storms in a teacup!  Over in no time following retribution exacted … usually detention, lines or an extra assignment to be completed. 

I never felt dread of being coerced into taking an unwanted and unnecessary medical treatment.  Neither was I forced to wear a mask – in my opinion a sign of enslavement – far worse than the dunce’s cap depicted in school comics or standing in the corner for all to see you had transgressed.

Holidays, or even days out by the seaside, with no thought of there being some inimical police officer demanding that I ‘keep my distance’ or ‘how far had I travelled’!  How wonderful to be able to lounge on the beach sipping cool drinks, eating sandwiches brought carefully from home and often laced with gritty sand blown in by the blissful sea breezes.  Ice cream cornets; candy floss; trips round the bay in motor boat excursions; a look in at the amusement arcades; rock pool exploration and sand castle building.  Such simple pleasures that have been tarnished now by fear of a disease that has been magnified out of all proportion!

I remember happier times and take pleasure in re-living them now in order to keep them evergreen.  They are a bulwark against a World that has been shamelessly manipulated by those who have made the play for supremacy over all, through a plan that purports to have been decades in the making.

In 1982 (after my divorce) I took my children to the South of France on my own on an organised coach trip to a campsite – 20 hours on the bus!  Everything was set up and ready for our occupation.  Every day there were activities for the children to enjoy while parents relaxed in the sun.  I paid in advance for several special trips (Including one to St Tropez) that were the icing on the cake of a very happy – if exhausting – 17 days away.  We hired bikes and rode into the next village to shop without a care in the World.

My family were on tenterhooks all the time we were away.  But we returned safe and sound apart from a few mosquito bites – or is it stings, I can never remember!  I cannot imagine being able to do that now as the situation with immigration will no doubt have altered the place out of all recognition.

I had a love affair with France and its people that lasted for years.   My second husband and I rented cottages well away from the big cities where we could visit the local markets instead of major supermarches and even considered buying and moving there.  On one occasion, having eaten something that definitely did not agree with me, I wrote a note (in my very stilted and careful French – identified by my lack of idioms) to be taken to the local pharmacy.  When the requisite medication returned it was accompanied by my letter, duly corrected by the pharmacist, who clearly had a well developed sense of humour!

Thank goodness I have so many happy recollections of times past to comfort me.  Through the dark days that we are currently experiencing in a World that may take years to return to an equitable state – if indeed it ever does! –  I may not be able to ‘escape’ physically but I may certainly escape mentally.

Whatever government does – it cannot erase my memories!

 

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