I REMEMBER YESTERDAY (Two)
I recall the days of youth in a mind that feels as young and fresh as though I were back in the days of childish realization and youthful awakening myself once more. The flesh is older now and the reflection in the hallway mirror still takes me by surprise as that old man stares back at me as though he has known me a lifetime, when in truth I barely recognise him but for that glint in his eyes, the vivacity for life so similar to my own.
In the days when children were allowed to wallow in the precious years of childhood, in sharp contradiction to these days where tiny girls with pierced ears, tattoos and stilettos, prance and preen in adult make-up and dresses too old for their tender years, pregnant in their early teens, life's plan already set as mothers proudly boast of generational traits as they head to the queue for state benefits. We have rapists aged twelve filling the pages of our tabloids and barely an eyebrow is raised by a population no longer shocked by the demise of standards and the fall from grace of our common decency.
Back then a while, with open doors, we children played in the streets, jumpers for goalposts, imaginations our greatest allies as we made our own entertainment without need for computer wizardry and the stale and stagnant concept of viewing the world through virtual reality Xbox games or on line ;Second life' programming for those sad enough to posesses a first life! Blissfully content and unaware that the euphoria of our experiences would one day give way to the harsh reality of adulthood with it's many twists and turns as fate dealt her cards, we were allowed to enjoy our formative years, not brush them aside and run from them into the clutches of faux adulthood. The long hard drought of seventy six when collecting water in buckets and containers from stand pipes on the corner of our street, the power outs when mum would use a candle to see us to our rooms at night and tea was brewed on camping stoves, the family huddled round and telling jokes whilst laughing madly. Summer days when my bike was king, a second hand Christmas present too large for my scrawny limbs, but loved and cherished just the same.
I weaved and wobbled on the pavements, a threat to every living thing both animal and human as I tasted my first real feelings of freedom. Cycling over to local parks and woodlands with my closest friend, I'd take my box Brownie and shoot landscape shots on the old fashioned film, a love affair with photography in the making. The miles I covered, the sights I saw, the sheer exuberance of youth still fresh in my mind from the days when the world seemed somehow a friendlier place, when the pace of life was slower and people happier without the expectations and trappings of the modern day need and greed society in which we live. Just three channels on the television screens, vinyl albums with that distinctive 'just pressed' aroma as you parted with your paper pound notes, tank tops and seventeen inch flared trousers, and school holidays that seemed to last forever.
Nowadays computers rule and children are attached at birth to mobile phones and Ipods, sometimes suffering into their later life with serious neck disorders from constantly looking down at text screens, instead of seeing the world and the beauty within. Caring parents, a happy heart and my bicycle as my chariot to freedom, I was a king of the road, a warrior for adventure, and childhood set me up for life ahead, as the man I am today. Memories, like butterflies gently rise and fall, bringing happy thoughts and sadness in equal measures, though few regrets as I look to the future, dwelling occasionally on my mistakes of the past. The important formative years of our lives, when the world is a green and pleasant land. Let the children have their childhood, for life is all too brief, let them walk before they need to run.
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Written July 4th 2010/Rewritten July 4th 2011
Photograph taken in my parents back garden in Blackheath, London, England at 13:54pm on Sunday July 3rd 2011.
Nikon D700 85mm 1/160s f/8.0 iso220
Nikkor AF 85mm f/1.8D. UV filter. Nikon GP-1
Latitude: N 51d 27m 58.40s
Longitude: E 0d 1m 55.62s
Altitude: 48m
