Time Travel

So yes, Wolverhampton.  Basically it wasn't 1988 there any more, which was almost too much to cope with for a mind altered by a day of conferencing followed by three pints of strong lager in Birmingham New Street.  The blue and cream double decker buses had been replaced by supermodern trams, swish apartment blocks had sprung up along the once derelict canalbanks, and at least one of the imposing Victorian civic buildings had been converted into a massive identikit Wetherspoons.  I wandered up to the Polytechnic (sorry, University) district and happened into the Posada on Lichfield Street, which was where we used to go on the rare occasions that we felt flush enough to change our usual tipple of watered-down Students Union lager for something more authoritative like Banks Bitter, or if we were feeling really extravagant, Holts Entire.  

There was only one other customer in the bar- a fellow passer-through, who turned out to be an engineer from Bristol.  Towards the end of a third one-for-the-road pint of Deuchars IPA (the Posada has developed pretensions and is styling itself as a Real Ale venue) I felt suddenly tired and emotional and launched into a lyrical exposition on the subject of nostalgia and how coming back to Wolverhampton probably wasn't good for me as not only did I keep nearly getting run over by trams but I fully expected to run into my twenty-year old self at every streetcorner.  I could have gone on in this vain for some time but at this point the engineer from Bristol suddenly remembered an urgent appointment with a contractor in New Invention.   

As you may imagine I'd had just about enough of time travel by that point so was glad to get the train north to 2011.  Little did I know I would spend much of the subsequent month in 1943, thanks to the National Curriculum, which has taken it upon itself to immerse Frankie, and by association his entire extended family, in the History of the Second World War.  Bedtimes have been given over to fending off questions about Anne Frank ('that lady was silly to hide in the attic, wasn't she daddy- she was much closer to the bombs up there') and to providing assurances that today's Germans are much more friendly than the ones they had back in the war and are absolutely not about to come back and raze our house to the ground like they did to his grandad's house in Newcastle when he was a baby (the grandad in question sent us, so that Frankie could read it out in class, a letter from the wartime government confirming that the house had been rendered uninhabitable by bombs and that a sum of £10 would be paid for the replacement of destroyed belongings).

I think Frankie on the whole welcomes the Allied triumph over Fascism, but would secretly like the Germans to come back for another go, just on the off-chance that an evacuation order would be issued and he would get a nice long ride on a train to the seaside.  For the present he's contenting himself with googling for Air Raid siren noises on You Tube, performing an idiosyncratic version of 'White Cliffs of Dover' on his three-quarter-size guitar, and churning out at production line speed a series of felt-tip Public Information Posters inspired by the ones in the Northern Imperial War Museum.  My favourite so far is entitled '1942-Rashonning Warning!' and features pictures of a cake, an ice-cream, and a banana, underscored respectively with captions reading 'hardly any', 'not much', and 'none at all'.

Clearly this wholesale evocation of the Blitz spirit has hit some kind of nerve with the three of us, because Saturday night saw us celebrating Charlotte's birthday with a small but perfectly formed 1940s themed evening, complete with the sounds of Glen Miller and everyone dressed in some approximation of the fashion of the day (flowing dresses and sombre ties- but again Frankie was the star of the show, giving expression to his evacuation fantasy in a knitted tank-top and an ancient battered rucksack).

This time next year, apparently, he'll be learning about the Romans, so you can look forward to stories of toga parties, or possibly of me finding myself half-cut in the city of Chester, wondering why everyone isn't talking Latin and bathing stark bollock naked in public lavatoria, and why there aren't Christians being torn apart by lions outside of Debenhams.  Nostalgia and alcohol- a dangerous mixture, mark my words. 

Comments

[looby]

My girls are always asking me in which historical period I'd most like to have lived (I blame Horrible Histories). In the way you sometimes just have to come up with an approximate best answer I say urban Georgian England but only if I could afford a quart of port each day.

I can't honestly say it would be late 80s Black Country, despite having a few good memories of the Posada too.

And mentioning the war, I was thinking of having this poster blown up and framed for Melanie, who shares Frankie's rose-tinted longing for country-wide devastation: http://img.moonbuggy.org/crush-the-germans/

[ISBW]

I think you owe it to your son to get a batch of genuine Roman 'garum' on the go. Just take five kilos of fresh anchovies, place in a barrel, salt generously, and leave for a year to liquefy. In 12 months, you will have no friends at all and Environmental Health will be on your back, but you will be able to give your boy the genuine Roman taste sensation on his cornflakes.

[Ozz]

JB, I too am enjoying the delights of a World War. Only this evening, Johnnie quizzed me on where we should build our Anderson Shelter and last week we discussed the alomost entirely unbelievable notion of eating "powdered eggs"!?
Wonderful stuff mate...will visit the Bee more often! Ozz & Co

[Jonathan]

Ozz- great to hear from you bonny lad, hope the family are all well. While we were in the Imperial War Museum we saw a soldier's breakfast ration tin and we marvelling at the contents-what Frankie found most astonishing was that the tin contained a single cigarette to enjoy as an accompaniment to the powdered eggs, spam and tea.

ISBW- that Roman delicacy sounds about as tempting as... well, powdered eggs and spam. And given that Frankie burst into tears the other morning at the sight of 'experimental' soda bread-based sandwiches in his lunchbox (he's a sensitive boy..), I'd say the chances of a successful breakfast based on garum-covered cornflakes are slim to zero. But thank you for the suggestion.

Looby that is a very good answer and I can certainly imagine you as a Georgian gentleman in a townhouse somewhere (actually Lancaster wouldn't be the worst bet), slowly squandering an inherited private income on strong licquour, possibly while reclining on a chaise longue and recording vignettes for posterity in your diaries using a handsome quill pen.

[Ozz]

This is way off topic but I know you'll appreciate it
http://angleofpostandbar.blogspot.com/2011/01/wheres-talking.html

[abby]

Eeee this piece of writing is so great and funny that I have almost missed the 6:11 train. Brilliant stuff, our Jonathan!