There was something
magical about my grandmother's toast. I'm not sure quite what
benevolent spells she weaved over what was – to all intents and
purposes – just a slice of burned flour and water smeared in
congealed cow's milk, but it worked. She would hand slice some fresh
white bread, toast it under her eye level grill, then – and I think
this may have been where the magic happened – hit the crunchy top
with the back of the knife to make little dents all the way around
the edge. This meant that the real, thick, creamy butter that she
then spread over it would ooze inside the crunchy exterior –
creating the most delicious bread and butter experience in the known
universe.
I have tried to
recreate it myself, but to no avail. I am now the proud owner of
those butter knives – handed over to me when I left home in a
hailstorm of helpful kitchen items – and I can confirm that there
is no magic in them. Bread is just bread, butter is just butter, a
grill is just a source of heat. Maybe I need to eat it in the dining
room of an unremarkable semi-detached house in walking distance of
Guildford station with a glass of warm Ribena, preferably on a crisp
late October morning at the beginning of half-term with a bald,
cynical old man telling me the story of Sweeney Todd as he plays tug
of war with his beloved Labrador?
Maybe it's not the
toast.
Nostalgia is a
powerful weapon, the right smell, a certain song, an old TV show, a
glimpse of a childhood toy, these things all create certain chemical
reactions in the brain. Happy fuzzy memories of a happier time,
before jobs, mortgages, children, Brexit, Trump and the ever-present
threat of apocalypse. I don't think I ever felt safer than on those
childhood holidays to my grandparents' houses. Either to Devon –
where you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a hotel as the
toast came on a toast-rack and the butter was often in sachets (my
grandmother was a thrifty woman who presented me with a margarine tub
filled with sachets of vinegar, mustard, ketchup and tartar sauce she
had 'saved' from the Wrey Arms on our many visits there), the Ribena
was substituted for Lemon Barley Water, and the old man had all his
hair – with barely a touch of grey – and told you golfing
stories while he watched snooker. Different, but every bit as
magical, or Guildford – depending on which bit of the country we
were living in at the time. Either way, Mum and Dad knew how to get
themselves a bit of quality child-free time.
Any
excuse to post this - occasionally referred to as
the
best song of all time by me - John Mellencamp classic
I come from a
generation for which the most powerful of memories tend to be
triggered by the TV. I recently questioned the fact that some of my
most emotional reactions are for American small towns – despite
having grown up in the bleak grey landscape of 1980s Guildford, and
the rural idylls of Devon (if you have ever visited Bideford, you
will know how much I am stretching the definition of rural idyll)
either way, neither of those places bear even a passing resemblance
to Kingston Falls, or Hill Valley (same
town, different names fact-spotters). As the massive success of
Ready Player
One confirms, the films we watch as kids have a powerful place in
our hearts.
Not just films but
all pop culture, who among us doesn't occasionally reread a favourite
book, or listen to a favourite album in the hope of glimpsing our
younger selves smiling back at us? I am still so in love with the
Shire that I can reread just the opening chapters of Lord of the
Rings without needing to finish the book. It is like a brief weekend
back in a home town that never really existed. I can be lost in happy
memories of the corridors of Galactica and the rocky outcroppings of
Eternia every bit as much as I can by strolling through Victoria or
Stoke Parks on a sunny afternoon – more so, because they remain
unchanged.
I say they have
remained unchanged, but that's not entirely true. If you have ever
been hit with a powerful enough nostalgia wave to watch old episodes
of Thundercats, Transformers, Mask etc. etc. on Youtube, then you,
like me, have probably been shocked to discover that what you
remember as a perfectly crafted fantasy world of good vs evil,
powerful characters and dizzying special effects (the effects have
not aged well, especially not in one of my personal childhood
favourites, The Box of Delights, though it has only added to its
charm and I still rewatch it every Christmas) is, in fact, a thinly
veiled advert for easily broken toys.
I
still have no happier memory than the unbridled joy
I
experienced at watching the first episode of Thundercats.
And they have
stayed that way. If you spend any time at all on social media these
days, you are almost certainly going to see at least one 'Like and
Share if you remember this,' meme every day. They are harmless fun,
images of Speak and Spells, Worzel Gummidge, Donkey Kong and Stretch
Armstrong, reminding you of a simpler time. Why not like them, share
them, and bring a bit of joy to your contemporaries?
Well, why not
indeed. It depends entirely on how you feel about data-mining and
targeted advertising, or building up fake ratings for pages that can
be sold on to the highest bidder (usually some demented racist hategroup or another). If, for example, you continually like clips of 80s
cartoons, arcade games, BMX bikes and Garbage Pail Kids, then it can
be reasonably assumed you are somewhere in your forties, and a bit of
a geek. Or, if you like pictures of sit-up-and-beg racing bikes,
stuff-of-nightmares china dolls and teddy bears and Muffin the Mule
then you are either racing towards your three quarters of a century,
or a fucking hipster. Either way, this helps the corporations bombard
you with adverts for whatever they think you should buy, and find the
right cartoon to put in that advert to gently nudge you into it. No
Top Cat, I don't want another mortgage you sell out bastard, and fuck
you Fred Flintstone, you corporate shill. Emotional manipulation via
your happiest childhood memories can never be a good thing.
This can only get
worse. I confidently predict a Philip K. Dick style future in which
we all access the internet directly from inside our brains via a chip
– for convenience's sake. A chip which will have incorporated a
feedback loop capable of accessing our fondest memories and utilising
them to sell us things. A happy world where our heart's desires are
transmitted straight to the people able to make them happen, where
you only have to think of a thing you want and it can be yours.
A world where they
can use the smell of my grandmother's toast to make me believe I want
to buy a handgun and vote for a despot.
Not
long to go now...
