Whatever happened to nostalgia?

[Barry Arrowsmith]

Aaaah, the good old days!
Remember them?
The world was bright, we were young(er) and the future was replete  
with possibilities.
Joy was it then to be alive.
And now?
What happened? Are the golden lads and girls finally come to dust?

Ever had the looking-glass experience? That shocking moment when  
quite unexpectedly you catch an unguarded glimpse of yourself in an  
ambushing mirror?

For years the same features had stared back at you as you'd scrubbed  
your teeth, shaved whichever bits you fancied shaving, plucked a  
recalcitrant nasal hair or two. So what if a slight mistiness seemed  
to be dimming the formerly vibrant monotone of hair colour; no matter  
that an extra wrinkle or two could be found at corner of eye or  
bordering lips slightly less fulsome than of yore; you're obviously  
just as you've always been  - with maybe a little extra maturity to  
season the dish.
Until that bloody mirror forces us to face the awful truth.
Whoops!
Gilbert and Sullivan time - Mabel we ain't, it's Ruth that's slipped  
into our skin unnoticed;  and now we too could easily pass for 45 in  
the dusk with the light behind us.

Just as small physical changes can accumulate, eventually becoming  
distressingly obvious to the unbiased eye, so also small  
accommodations in thinking become major revisions of perspective  
almost without being noticed -  for a while anyway. One day though,  
comes the realisation that, no matter how much you try to kid  
yourself, a reassessment has taken place.
And as with other things in life, so with HP.

Over the past few years (up until the last few months, anyway) I've  
been a persistent poster. Others may use words like 'incorrigible',  
'recidivist' or even 'pestilential' in place of persistent. Fair  
enough, I  won't argue. According to my files I inflicted something  
like 1500 posts onto the members of TOL and toc in about three and a  
half years, and since I'm a garrulous old bugger that adds up to an  
awful lot of words. It was fun to be involved, to pit wits against Jo  
and the other members. But lately.....

Days go by and I don't even bother to check the board - and when I do  
it's a quick skim and then off to another website - one invariably  
not connected to HPdom. No inclination (let alone compulsion) to  
respond or add to a thread, no on-going analysis or theorising;  
indeed, no HP book has been opened since the New Year. All in all,  
the typical symptomatology of a burnt out case and not particularly  
uncommon.

Not quite. Comes the mirror moment, that instant of unguarded  
honesty, just a couple of days ago. The realisation struck when a  
couple of old friends, more in mock sorrow than anything else, chided  
me for my enthusiasm for a 'kid's book'. Not for the first time -  
usually this provokes an entertaining, insulting, almost scurrilous  
exchange terminating with us laughing our way to the pub. Not this  
time. "Yeah, you're probably right," was the reply, followed by a  
scathing assessment of clunky authorial manipulation of text and  
fandom. I really don't like the direction in which HP seems to be  
going. The last book, in conjunction with various interviews, website  
hints and public pronouncements by Jo have put me right off - almost  
without me appreciating the fact - until somebody unwittingly pulled  
the trigger.

So you can rest easy in your beds. No more weird theories or tortuous  
analyses from Kneasy. Mind you, you won't be completely safe - once I  
get a few real-life things out of the way it'll allow more time for  
Radio TBAY, Madam Whiplash and Magical Medicine. Won't that be nice?

Even so, I miss the sheer unadulterated fun of the good old days.
Even if they were only a year ago.

Kneasy