not millions of fun.

The past is a foreign country. Someone brought this clumsy phrase up at me at the weekend - much like my friend Odge regurgitated a packet of sweets called 'Millions of Fun' during a trip to Cornwall and thus;
"And were they Millions of Fun, Odge ?"
"Fuck, no."
(Check for yourselves, they've actually changed the name of the sweets to just 'Millions'. I suspect the 'Fun' was reported to trading standards, because a mouthful of acidic syrupy goo could never be called 'Fun', unless excessive enjoyment tastes of sugary bile.)
Where the hell was I ?

Oh yes. The past is a foreign country. Not one you'd like to visit either, no matter how good the memories. If the past was a foreign country it would be called Memoralia and would be a hazy, indistinct blob on the end of a more self-important country (namely the Present) and would make you cringe if you were to ever have to look back through photographs of that particular holiday.
"What the HELL was I wearing ?"
"No idea Daise, do you want me to burn this one too ?"
"Yes please."

I, however, tend to revisit Memoralia a lot. For a start, it's right next door. Secondly, the cost is very low - maybe the painful tug of a memory or two - thirdly, it's safe there. Because nothing which happens there can surprise you. Do you think this sounds a bit mad ? Really, don't. We all do it, each and every one of us, more then - on average - three times a day. Show me a person who exists solely in the present and I'll show you an imbecile. A song, a smell, even a colour can remind us of something, someone, sometime and then you're already right back there, fiddling around for your passport and maybe your currency. How long you stay is up to you, but be aware, it is not a country built for living in, only for visiting.
As I said, it's not a bad place, but it is captivating, and it's easy to stay there longer than you'd planned.
However.
I once looked after a lady with no short-term memory. This meant that every fifteen minutes or less she would ask me what my name was or why I was in her house and what I was doing there, but yet she could tell me stories of her childhood, or how she met her husband, and the name of the ship he sailed on in World War II, but not whether she'd had breakfast that morning….and what was my name again ? Her knack for recounting incidents - however minor - which had occurred forty or fifty years previously bordered on uncanny - but there was no obvious cure or method with which to help her train her brain to living in the present. It is significant to note as well that I, as a crass, idiotic twenty-five year old grew frustrated with it, very quickly. Thinking back now I wish I could have supported her more, but I was young and stupid and not altogether patient enough to deal with it.
So, back to the past. There it is, spread gleaming and generous before you, as it sometimes can be, or wrapped in barbed wire with crows circling above, depending on which past it is that you're re-visiting. Just don't stay there too long. As my friend Odge would tell you it is not, in any way, Millions of Fun.