There is a tipping point for most of us, one in which we start to look back rather than forward.
Until about the age of seven or eight, like a cat, we live in the moment. Then we move into the ‘when I grow up I want to be’ stage, throughout which we are confident in our own ability to become footballers, rock stars, astronauts or, less fancifully, accountants or, in my case, first of all a joiner (unfortunately I was extraordinarily crap at woodwork) then a journalist (insert your own joke).
This period, like the ice age, waiting for a melting that will give way to something warmer, more secure, seems to last an eternity. It’s a 15-year long documentary from the 1970s (Tomorrow’s World) in which we look into possibilities so remote (“By the year 2000 we will all be driving cars in the sky” or “In 20 years we will be catching rockets to the moon as easily as getting on a bus") they will likely never happen. Actually, in a strange way, given the transport cuts over the years…
Then looking forward becomes shorter term – the usual house, partner, possibly children, career progress, pursuing ambitions, a new car, a holiday, being able to afford a visit to the dentist.
Next up, the time-frame, the scope of hope, narrows further. I don't know when it happened - at some stage it did and I missed it - but you stop looking forward and life becomes a nostalgia fest. Conversations, old pictures, music, television… I have written about it recently, so I won’t repeat much here, but my mind seems to be processing my life as if it’s over. I want to re-connect with some of what I drifted away from but at the same time seem to have stopped planning for the future. Somewhere, somehow, life speeded up and flung me onto the far side of the hill.
Suddenly I/we/you can’t play football anymore, run as well as we could, we don’t bounce the same when we hit the ground, and maybe the looking back comes from this because we know it’s only going to get worse, narrowing and narrowing until… So I/we/you stop, reflect on when life was, if not always great or even good, inclusive, at least, of hope.
I am writing this partly as a commitment, more to myself than anyone else – it may even appear something of a threat, or at best, an annoyance to some.
This isn't a moan. Well, not entirely. It’s intended not as a promise to stop looking back, but to use the power of memory to create something for the future.
That something, I hope, will be by second novel, which will be called Quarrysiders, or similar, and will be set in a place I know well, the story stretching from the early 1970s, through 1977 in particular, to 2026.
That’s the idea anyway. I have the characters, plenty of notes and scenes, a beginning and, I think, a conclusion. So, go on then, put it in order, get it done. Learn from history and take it forward instead of just reminiscing, and do it this year.
A resolution of sorts? A bit late, but better than never. Maybe.