Serener Skies

Reading about Hauntology, of which I have done a fair amount recently (see my last post), one is struck by the persistence of cultural themes associated with what we would tend to call folk horror. Wikipedia's entry for folk horror defines it as "a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk religion, paganism, sacrifice and the da

I feel a little apprehensive in approaching the subject of Hauntology as it's a philosophy that for quite a while I struggled to understand, and even now I see it as one whose emphasis changes depending on whose definition you are reading. To some it's a carefully thought out proposition, to others it seems to reflect no more than a taste for 60s and 70s folk horror. And yet it is a philosophy which, in its essentials, aligns so closely with my own outlook on our culture and

There's a whole blog post to be written about football culture in the UK before and since its total commercialisation and the formation of the English Premiership in the 1990s. But that's for another time. I was stopped in my tracks slightly a couple of days ago by the news that Kevin Keegan, the former Liverpool striker christened Mighty Mouse because of his diminutive (5 feet 7 inches) stature, had died at the age of 75. Kevin Keegan in his Liverpool pomp. I don't watch muc

When I was growing up during the late 60's, 70's and 80's my parents' newspaper of choice was the Daily Mirror. If you were working class at that time it seemed to be pretty much a choice between that and the Sun; the Mail and the Express were both seen as something that were really for those aspiring to middle class status, while the broadsheets - the Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph - were seen as so far beyond our sphere of experience that I suspect they were not alwa

(This post is based on one I wrote for my now defunct 'St Cyr On Wheels' blog back in March 2021. I find that for one reason or another over the years I have left a trail of sad-looking, lonely, overgrown and abandoned blogs behind me, and given that I would really like to make a go of this one I have decided to move over to the new format anything from the old ones that seems relevant. Also it's easier than thinking of something new to write, but you never heard me say that.

So this year's choice of holiday destination was Scotland, and, more specifically, the Isle of Skye. There were numerous reasons for this choice and some of them were practical. With the ongoing shenanigans in the Middle East, where, rather bizarrely, belligerent powers seem to declare ceasefires and carry on shooting and bombing people regardless, oil prices are up and down like the Assyrian Empire (to borrow an old Monty Python line) making holidays abroad less than economi

In a bit of a break from the usual, the theme for today’s post is not really anything nostalgic at all, but is related to my main hobby which is the playing of wargames, part of a general fascination/obsession with military history (so there is a historical theme, be it ever so tenuous). I have to apologise to regular readers of the blog (Ho ho! Allow me my conceits please) for its appearance here. I would normally have posted it in my other blog, St Cyr On Wheels, but I find

I first started this blog back in the summer of 2019 with little thought except that it was to be, broadly, a nostalgic blog about the past, whether it be a very personal aspect of the past like the three Peanuts strips that formed the theme of the first post, or the history of popular train travel that was covered in a subsequent one. Think perhaps something along the lines of Michael Bywater's hilarious, if now perhaps somewhat dated, Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost And Wher

At Primary School back at the end of the 1960’s the one thing in the classroom that fascinated and attracted me the most was its collection of dolls houses. They were Victorian dolls houses, which is unsurprising because Northcote Road Primary School in Walton, Liverpool, was itself a Victorian institution; one of those rather dour-looking dark red brick buildings that at the time seemed to be making no concession to their aesthetic appeal but in retrospect appear to hold up

I find that of all the things in this world there is none that has such an intense and instant effect upon my mood as music, and I make no apology for warning the reader that music is likely to feature in this blog even more regularly than the Second World War. This visceral reaction to music can be a hugely positive thing and there are certain songs that have long been go-tos for me when I need a lift of some kind or a calming ointment in times of depression or stress. Madon

It’s that time of year again. The Summer Bank Holiday has passed, September is with us and the kids will shortly be back at school. As if on cue, the temperature across the UK has dropped from the freakish highs we had last weekend to something much more typical for the time of year. One might almost say that autumn is in the air. There is that sense of the passing of another summer, the beginning of that descent towards the turn of the year’s wheel, as the days start to shor

We British have many idiosyncratic behaviours that have been commented upon with admiration, bemusement or contempt by other nations, and perhaps none more so than our drinking habits. I have often thought in earlier times that there was a peculiar joylessness to British drinking. The Parisians can sit on the boulevards outside their cafes in that effortlessly stylish way sipping red wine, smoking Gauloises and talking about ennui; their neighbours to the east can uproariousl

I feel bound to warn the regular reader of this blog that the Second World War will appear regularly either at the centre or hovering...

Deciding what to write about in the very first post of an avowedly nostalgia-oriented blog feels like something pretty momentous. I am...