Nothing is ever quite as you remember it. Gold Bars,
recently purchased from Home & Bargain, a Mecca for throwback chocolate, just
aren’t as tasty as they were when I was a kid. (Pause for a quick aside. Despite
what the sign says, I refuse to call it Home Bargains. I’m Scouse. It’s Home
AND Bargain. Singular Bargain. Don’t even try and question me. I’m shutting
down that conversation right now) Chesney Hawkes probably isn’t as fit as the 8-year-old
me thought he was and I refuse to introduce my kids to the wonders of Thundercats,
just in case it was, in fact, shit. Some things are best kept in the past, preserved
by glory and nostalgia. Certain aspects of your child’s early years are also
kept this way. It’s lovely to think you had a joyfully happy baby, who rarely cried
and was a walking, talking, potty trained six-month-old child genius, even if,
in reality, they were a squawking brat of fairly average intelligence.
To some extent, the sands of time do smear Vaseline over the
lenses of our rose-coloured spectacles and everything is in soft focus, all warm
and fuzzy. Unless something traumatic has happened, by the end of the toddler
years, most people choose to remember mainly the yummy, cuddly sweet bits of
those early days. Or maybe that is just me. I’m a bugger for nostalgia but I
can’t help but think that, now baby number 2 is here, nostalgia is being a bit
of a bugger for me, causing me more stress and anxiety than the present.
