No such longing

I'm not nostalgic. Meaning I don't long to be back in some earlier time that I see as much better than the present.

The fact is that the past is always a mixture of good and bad, and it's easy to glamorise the positive aspects while overlooking the bad.

Such as the 1960s. Yes, it was a time of amazing creativity and cultural delights, but it wasn't much fun for victimised gays, or women who were expected to be in favour of free love - which in practice meant sexual availability.

But you could say I'm nostalgic not for a particular time period but for everyday things that seem preferable to their present equivalent.

Like making purchases. They used to be a simple matter of handing over cash or a cheque. But nowadays you need all sorts of technology like QR codes and apps, not to mention passwords and pin numbers.

Like train travel. I used to buy a ticket at a booking office and it would take me from A to B. But today prices vary depending on what time of day you travel, which train company you use and whether you book at the station or online.

I could imagine being nostalgic for some earlier time if my present life was utterly miserable and disastrous, but thankfully it isn't anything of the sort. Even when my life seemed a bit bleak and empty in my late twenties I never wished I could go back to an earlier period. I just assumed things would get better.

But it would be quite fun to pay a flying visit to the days of Beatlemania and bell bottoms and Black Forest Gateaux.

Over and done with

People sometimes ask me if I have any regrets in my life, and my answer is always the same - no, no regrets, I simply do my best in any situation, and if things don't work out, I just move on.

Regrets seldom achieve anything positive. They only make you feel bad and stupid and thoughtless. And usually the thing you regret is over and done with and you can't rewrite the past.

I don't have any regrets, but there are many things I'd like to have done but didn't, which is rather different. And I don't wish I had done those things, I'm simply aware that I could have done them but for one reason or another I didn't. I don't see those things as a big failure in my life.

I'd like to have lived closer to my mum when she was going downhill mentally and physically. I'd like to have been able to drop in every day or two to see how she was doing. But I was 350 miles away in Belfast so that was impossible.

I'd like to have learnt to play a musical instrument, but I wasn't encouraged to do so and my first attempt at piano lessons went badly; my piano teacher declared me unteachable. But maybe if I'd tried again later in my childhood, it would have worked out.

I'd like to have been a successful novelist, but I simply didn't have the intellect or imagination or self-discipline to complete a novel. I did give it a try but after about 100 pages I hit total writer's block and couldn't get any further.

So I don't regret any of those lapses. I'm very philosophical about them. I could have done all sorts of things but for lack of talent or inclination or because of circumstances they never happened. So be it. Che sera sera.

Past and gone

Some people seem to be in love with the past. They look back nostalgically at some supposed "golden age", they wish they could be twenty again, they dwell on blissful memories from fifty years ago, they keep countless momentos of their childhood.

I'm not like that at all. I'm more than happy to leave the past behind and move on into the future. Not because the past was terrible or embarrassing or difficult (though it was just that often enough), but simply because it's all over and done with whereas the future is full of novel and exciting possibilities.

I don't believe in any "golden age". All golden ages had plenty of horrors and calamities along with the delights. I don't want to be twenty again. Life was tough at that age, full of disappointments born of inexperience and naivety. And I suspect most of my blissful memories are by now wild exaggerations that bear little resemblance to the long-gone reality.

No, I much prefer to relish the present and wait expectantly for whatever surprises the future has in store. Even the virus lockdown, frustrating as it is, in a way is exciting precisely because we have little idea of what's going to happen next. The past is all settled, frozen in aspic, while the future is still evolving and mutating.

I possess very few reminders of the past, at least prior to Jenny's appearance. I have only one photo of me and my sister at a tender age, and one or two photos of my parents and grandparents. I haven't kept anything from my schooldays - uniforms or reports or prizes. I don't have any old letters or diaries or notes to the milkman. I have far more memories than tangible momentos.

For me the past is all water under the bridge. But I'm always eager to know what tomorrow will bring.

Under the influence

People are fond of saying "you must put the past behind you", but it's not as easy as you think. You can push away the past as much as you like, but it has a nasty habit of coming back to bite you.

I have a natural tendency to forget about experiences that were unpleasant, or at least to remember the experience but forget the negative emotions that went with it. If someone suggests I might have been very upset, I reflect for a second or two and think maybe I was. Maybe.

All those feelings of embarrassment or rage or shame or betrayal that stick in other people's minds evaporate from my own mind very quickly, as if they never occurred in the first place. It's a sort of mental de-cluttering mechanism that clears away stuff that's no use to me.

But whatever I remember or don't remember, those experiences are still a part of me and still affect me in all sorts of ways. For example, things people have said and done to undermine my confidence, perhaps way back in my childhood, can still dent my confidence even now.

However much I talk myself up and tell myself I'm an intelligent, experienced person who should be effortlessly confident in most situations, still there's this undercurrent of past experience that can lead to nagging self-doubt.

Saying you must put the past behind you is a bit like saying you must forget your gender. It's so embedded in your mind that it continues to have repercussions whether you like it or not.

The best thing you can do is stop the past being too much of a nuisance, like an over-energetic dog that keeps leaping all over you. If you can get it to lie quietly in a corner, not bothering you, you're doing well.

Unshared memories

One reason I can't fully explain myself to other people is that so much of my identity is made up of memories - lush, detailed, intense memories that others can never have access to. I can only summarise those memories in a few brief sentences that fail to pass on their complexity.

It's a whole inner landscape or inner country that I'm familiar with, that I've wandered through hundreds of times, that's as vivid to me as the outside reality I'm seeing right now. Yet nobody else has set foot in it.

If I think of my boarding school, for example, a whole swathe of memories spreads across my mind, a whole panorama of teenage bullies, uninspired teachers, muddy sports fields and loud rock music. There's no way I can convey the full flavour of those memories to anyone else. However well chosen the words, they can only suggest a tiny fragment of what my inner eye is seeing.

It's like trying to conjure up Venice to someone who's never been there. I can describe it, I can show you a few pictures, but I can't give you the full three-dimensional reality of being there and discovering it for yourself.

It doesn't matter if the memories are true or false, accurate or distorted. The point is that they inhabit my mind but they don't inhabit yours. They fill out and embellish my past to give it a completeness that nobody else can know.

I can remember a particular girlfriend, say, and exactly how she spoke and moved and ate and laughed and undressed. However detailed my account of her, you will never see her as clearly as I can see her in my memories. You will never be able to imagine the living, breathing, animated person that I can instantly visualise.

If only I could transfer those memories, how much more you would know about me and my inner experience. If only you could download them from my brain and play them back through your own senses, in all their astonishing intricacy.

But no, they're mine and mine alone, circulating my mind like guests at a party, furnishing me with endless private scenarios I can't communicate. A whole chunk of my identity as inaccessible as the Milky Way.