BS: Those 'Proustian' moments

Subject: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 10:58 AM

Marcel Proust describes, in "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu", how childhood and youthful memories from the narrator's past were evoked by the dipping of a madeleine biscuit into a cup of tea - the "Proustian moment".

I'm sure we all have had similar experiences in our lives - where a scent or a sound suddenly brings back memories of a particular childhood experience. For me (as one example), there's a particular song sung by Norah Howard - "Other People's Babies" - which was always on the wireless (yes, wireless) in the 1940s. Hearing that the other day took me back about 65 years to our front room in the Glasgow suburb of Kelvindale, with the bakelite radio (an "Eko") on the side table, the utility furniture, the gas fires and the food ration books and coupons. There I was, with paper and crayons, drawing stretched out on the floor while the BBC Scottish Home Service wafted out over the room.

Any similar moments out there?

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 11:26 AM

I still can't see a wasp without remembering my first wasp sting. We were sitting in deckchairs on the front at [I think it was] Brighton. It was about 1936 when I would have been 4. A wasp suddenly stung me under the left arm. I naturally screamed quite loudly and then sobbed and cried. A man in a nearby chair frowned at my mother and asked, none too politely, if she couldn't keep that noisy child quiet. My mother's brother Dave, a stout and successful self·made cockney businessman [I think he was in trading-stamps at the time, tho ultimately dealt in wine & spirit imports in Eastcheap till he died of a sudden heart attack on holiday in Torquay in 1954 aged 54] leapt immediately to our defence. I can still hear my Uncle Dave saying loudly to the officious by-sitter. "Pity it didn't bloody-well sting you!"

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 12:45 PM

"A man in a nearby chair frowned at my mother and asked, none too politely, if she couldn't keep that noisy child quiet."

Hmm. That wasp has clearly had an extremely long-term effect on you. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 01:10 PM

Good for Uncle Dave.

I've decided to relive a childhood experience. A month ago I bought the Dover book of 'American Sailing Ships to Color.' I've got three of them done, using colored pencils (for detail) and pastels (for large areas like sky and water). In the process I've discovered that the DH knows an amazing amount of stuff about boats.

When I bought the coloring book, I toyed with the idea of getting the 64-box of Crayola crayons which I yearned for as child. But now I realize that the colored pencils are more fun to handle and make a better final picture.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 02:32 PM

I started primary school in Abingdon, 1955-58. One memory of the place that never left me was school lunch, which usually featured custard. (There were reasons for this which went all the way to top in Government food policy). Hot, pink or white milky slime.

I next saw the place in the early 1980s, having spent most of the intervening years in other continents. I'd gone to Oxford to see my mad ex-girlfriend and decided to walk out to Abingdon. Going past the gate of the school, the smell of School Lunch Custard leapt out at me, unchanged in 25 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 03:19 PM

walsall. whenever i hear any mention of this town/football club it takes me back to a subbuteo tournament played by myself and a couple of friends in about 1968. we played a cup competition between all the league clubs in scotland and england. as far as i know it's the only tournament walsall ever won (for those of you who don't remember the occasion they beat city in the final. 3-1)

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 07:15 PM

Walsall? I lived just up the road from there, in Tipton, in 1973 for a year. I'll never forget the rats strolling down the high street just outside the abattoir. I lived in the best house in Tipton, which was the Methodist minister's manse. I invite anyone here who reads my posts to pick the bones out of that lot. No prizes, just intellectual satisfaction.

As for those sharp moments, every time I hear Vesti la Giubba I think of my dad (still kickin' at 92) playing his Caruso 78s on his dusty old "gramophone". He had a bit of Paul Robeson too, quite modern then, and some Peter Dawson. They don't make 'em like that any more.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 09:26 PM

Peanut butter chocolate cake, a recipe (or receipt for You Others) for which my mother got off a can of peanut butter in 1947 or so. Eggless, but very, very good, and the odor will bring back memories of better times than these.

So will walking around in woodland after flood waters have receded and the ground is only slightly muddy and not all of the waters have evaporated from mud holes...a friend was nearly bitten by a water moccasin while we were doing that one day. Another guy who was walking next to him shot the snake; it measured six feet long. My friend bought all the beer the other guy could drink that day. No, I only saw it all.

Odors are said to be the most evocative and powerful triggers for memory. I have many, and some bring up very unpleasant memories indeed. Others, like the cake, are much nicer.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 03 Dec 15 - 07:03 PM

I had the opposite thing happen - saw a screen-saver of the old Asteroids video game and suddenly, I had the flavor of the machine coffee from my college student lounge fill my head!

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Dec 15 - 07:48 AM

Belated slowburn 'LoL', Steve, re 2 Dec 1245. Would go so far as ROFL, indeed.

You yourself are of course notable within these precincts for the invariable excellent taste and admirable restraint of each and every one of your utterances

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: GUEST, ^*^
Date: 04 Dec 15 - 08:06 AM

I notice it most often with a smell. In my part of the west where dirt roads were very dusty they would periodically put down an oil that must contain some creosote, the same smell given off by the treated pilings at the ferry terminals on Puget Sound. One of my earliest pleasant memories combines either fishing or taking a ferry and smelling that smell of the pilings, so whenever I drove on those dusty roads (during my days working in the Cascade Mountain forests) I would smell the oil and be transported. Now that smell, often encountered near old recycled railroad ties used in garden landscaping, transports me to both the ferry dock and the dirt roads in the forest.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Dec 15 - 06:43 AM

A variant of mine on the Proustian moment, btw, is the fact that when I find myself unbearably, shatteringly, overwhelmingly bored by something I am trying to read or watch, I am immediately reminded of my several efforts over a long life actually to read À la Recherche... I honestly have tried several times over the years to come to terms with the mighty œuvre; but I have always, I confess, succumbed to the intolerable boredom induced before I have even left Swann's Way and given up the effort.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Dec 15 - 06:49 AM

... and let me add that I am not at all proud of it; but it just happens to be the case.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 15 - 08:13 AM

Ah, Michael - a confession from me...

I spent four years living in Sudbury Hill, just off Harrow-on-the-Hill in North West London, while working in Broadcasting House. So my daily commute in those days was (a) walk down Greenford Road to Sudbury Hill tube station (b) Piccadilly Line to Green Park (c) Victoria Line to Oxford Circus (d) walk up Regent Street to the Beeb.

I set myself the (un)enviable task of reading the whole of "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" in the original French - just to pass the time - and succeeded in completing it before we left London for Brighton in 1976. Was it seven volumes... can't remember. But I recall constantly thumbing through my pocket French-English dictionary on the tube train!

How's that for masochism? I certainly can see why many people give up at "Swann's Way".

Why did I do it? Because it was there.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 05 Dec 15 - 08:40 AM

I had to be away last week and stayed in a Band B. I declined the full "English" and had cornflakes instead. I have not had cornflakes in many, many years.I was instantly reminded me of every school dining hall I have ever been in. I could even hear the chatter, the din of cutlery, the scraping of chairs on hardwood floors. I may never eat cornflakes again.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Dec 15 - 03:28 PM

Meetings that go on for 3 hours and consume 500,000 words when a seventeen word memo would suffice, is arguably a Proustian afternoon.

However any pathway to a twenty year old memory is remarkable.

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Dec 15 - 03:18 AM

Still, I have read the whole of Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time right thru, all 12 books, several times: and Paul Scott's Raj Quartet (Jewel in the Crown & that lot) right thru 2 or 3 times too.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Those 'Proustian' moments
From: GUEST,Gda Music
Date: 06 Dec 15 - 06:33 AM

A funny thing happened to me on my way to....The 1948 Summer Olympics:

I`m sure that everyone will be able to recall their own particular personal "funny thing that happened" episode?. An early one of mine was the day as a 16 year old lad I got really excited to find I had been lucky enough to have been given the gift of a couple of tickets for one of the Olympic events. My younger pal from next door had to ask his Mum and Dad for permission to go with me, and on the allotted day we went down to catch the bus over to nearby Wembley. The tickets were for the Olympic Fencing competition being held at "The Palace of Engineering" a building being the venue for this particular event and situated adjacent to the old Wembley Stadium.

The thing I do recall about this fencing event was that it turned out to be a really boring sport. We certainly were not impressed with it and agreed we were glad that at least it had been a free outing except for the expense of our local bus fares back home again.

Reaching back home we were definitely more impressed for sure when strolling the few yards up our road from the bus stop. The same houses are still there today, one of which belonged to my Aunts landlady who happened to be was standing chatting to a neighbour over her front gate. Just as my pal and I were level with her gate, a car drew up, stopped and a girl in her 30s? called out something from the passenger window. Thinking that they were seeking directions I asked her if she was lost, but all she said was a mumbling and repeating about wanting to get out to dance in front of the car. Some models of cars in those days used to have what got to be called "suicide doors" because their rear-hinge door construction caused so many accidents when being opened. My mumbling passenger had one of these doors which she opened out revealing everything. I`ve long forgotten anything about her facial features but the rest of her I can still picture, she only had a thin summer dress pulled up around her waist and nothing else, not a stitch!. Embarrassed by now I must have stammered to ask her and her driver again "where did they want to go?". With her left leg out nearly managing to step onto the pavement, her other knee sort of up in the air she was still mumbling about dancing. Her driver suddenly piped up to say "he wont come", she pulled her bare leg back to sit on the seat and told him to give some money. Unbelievably he took a 10 shilling note from his wallet and passed it to her, I have no idea now what happened then except the landlady and her friend who were standing just a couple of yards from us were heard loudly exclaiming that it was disgusting spectacle. The car must have just driven off leaving us to wonder what was going on....... We never found out!.

Over the years my pal and I both moved away although during the 1950s we did occasionally bump into each other. The fact that the star of those games "Fanny" Blankers-Koen showed up on TV with her 4 gold medals certainly didn`t dim our appreciation to the fact that it was us who had our real "live" Olympic close up!

GJ