Some neighbours with too much time on their hands have organised a street party for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee next weekend.
There are requests to bake cakes and instructions to move cars after the council grants permission to close the road.
It all feels like a lot of unnecessary faff for the pleasure of sitting at a long trestle table with neighbours I rarely talk to, eating food I don’t want, and listening to “We’ll Meet Again” on a dodgy PA system.
Until quite recently I had concluded I just don’t like people but in supervision, it was pointed out to me that actually, I appear to have a skill for cultivating very deep long term relationships, even if they are small in number.
“Does that mean I don’t have to eat hot dogs with the guy from number 3 who listens to techno at unreasonable volumes?”
What’s slightly confusing about my antipathy toward the street party is my strong nostalgia for those I have attended in the past.
We had one for the Golden Jubilee when the children were small.
We all lined our BBQs up in the road and cooked food for the neighbours, while the man at number 43, who used to be a pharmacist, kept stepping in and turning all the burgers unable to trust any of us to do things properly.
There was a fire engine too, and memories of my children sitting in the cab with helmets on are etched in my memory.
In 1977 we had a celebration for the Silver Jubilee, my memories of which are more bleached in colour and feature nylon t-shirts and plastic Union Jacks.
I would have missed that party as I was away on scout camp but Stephen Stubbs threw an enamel plate into the air which came down on the back of my head and I was so distressed my mother had to come and get me.
It is not lost on me that in 1977 I was in a place I didn’t want to be (I hated scout camps), and next weekend will be the same.
Perhaps I have not progressed at all in 45 years towards easier social integration.
That’s partly the role of nostalgia, to connect the earlier model of us to the current version and so mark out how far we have come.
Indeed I am frequently hopelessly nostalgic for my childhood despite the fact that I know I was often sad and anxious.
Nostalgia is valuable not only in helping us to re-write pain so that it sits in a frame of comfort and mitigation, but because it also reminds us that we are in a constant state of forward motion. Even if it really hurts right now, it almost certainly won’t forever.
It’s so odd but uplifting that memories of times I remember being quite a struggle sit around me now as a warm blanket.
I’m almost grateful for that enamel plate on the back of the head, or the wasp that I put my hand on at summer camp that year, or the miserable afternoon I spent alone in my aunt’s house in the Cotswolds when I came across her copy of “The Joy Of Sex.”
Research shows that nostalgia leads us towards a reduction in materialism and an increase in altruism. It helps couples to strengthen their bonds and triggers a surge of creativity and imagination in us.
Perhaps most powerful of all though is something that Professor Tim Wildschut calls “intimacy maintenance”, the way we use nostalgia to remind us of the people who are no longer here but remain important to us.
Perhaps that’s why I feel so nostalgic about the street parties in years gone by because they remind me of my small children and my parents, all of whom only now exist in my memory.
I won’t be taking part in the festivities next weekend but I might open the door and listen to the sounds while I close my eyes and return to a place that reminds me of where I have come from.
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