Smell is the sense most connected to memory, but running it a close second has to be music. The music that settles on a time and place and evermore when heard triggers a vivid uncontrollable memory like aural lavender.
And all too often it's embarrassing with the passage of time. Tonight in Tong Chef a programme I haven't seen or heard in years was on, Emmerdale. The theme music immediately transported me back to 70s Sussex, when in a whole different life I did some labouring but the place I worked at was close enough to home to allow me to go back for lunch (or dinner as we call it in working-class Sussex still) And guess what used to be on as I munched some sandwich in the lounge? That's right, Emmerdale, or Emmerdale Farm as it was then. So I went back thirty years from Tong Chef to Whitelea Road - Doctor Who eat your hearts out!
A few others that do the same thing - Talk Talk Happiness is easy >>> Leysin, 1988 with the first big snow of the winter falling outside; Echo Beach Martha and the Muffins >>> a grotty field in Teignmouth in about 1979; The Passage Fear >>> Flintstone Club, Littlehampton, 1981; Stone Roses, I Wanna Be Adored >>> Worthing 1990, Gilbert O'Sullivan Nothing Rhymed >>> the level crossing at Betchworth, Surrey in the early 70s. I could go on, but I expect you've already lost the will to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment