Reel-to-Reel

I’m sure that there is a name for that strange component of our brains that maintains a special vault for certain feelings or thoughts and then trundles them forward for examination sometimes quite unexpectedly. I most often experience this via my sense of smell: one minute I could be hurtling along, making a grocery list in my head – broccoli, yogurt, tinned tomatoes – and the next minute, the sweet smell of clover, a distinctive floral note I always associate with British summer is carried to me on the breeze and suddenly I’m sixteen, lying in the long grasses slow kissing a boy with eyes the colour of river pebbles. And yes, my stomach flips over a little bit just for a second or two then it’s gone.

There are other more banal things: the smell of a certain brand of laundry detergent that I always associate with one of Niles’ friends, whose stripey t-shirts always bore that distinctively clean scent; the cold quiver of raspberry Jell-o on my tongue will always transport me back in time to a childhood Tonsillectomy, as well as the faint scent of Chanel No.5 on my mother’s dress gloves which she let me keep as a comfort during the overnight hospital stay; songs, of course, too numerous to mention evoke all sorts of emotions: ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Kashmir,’ ‘Mannish Boy‘ = Basic Lust but sickly, ridiculous, howlers like “Without You” or even worse, this one from Slik are classics, taking me right back to the self-loathing, menthol cigarette sucking misery of adolescent rejection, quite possibly after The Clover Event that I have just described.

The cadence of an accent or a voice is also something I’ve always been very tuned in to for some reason. I hear and identify accents readily – especially the regional UK ones I am familiar with, automatically retaining the speaker’s manner of forming certain vowels.

But it’s slippery too.

For some reason, I am completely unable to recall my parents’ voices at all. Recently, my eldest brother mentioned that he had found a trove of home movies in his basement and wondered quite reasonably if we might transfer them to a more accessible format other than crumbling 8 mm reels, not seen for literally decades. My first feeling was abject panic, even though I would also be so excited to have Frasier, Niles and The General see this footage, to actually see my parents who often now seem like something that I may have only imagined or read about. What I seem to be left with is my own composite picture, pieced together from snippets of events and certainly not very reliable since fifteen is an especially dire age to be forming reasonable ideas.

But with these films, I could see them laughing again, my mum on her hands and knees pretending to chase a one year old me across the carpet as I squeal joyously just out of reach or as the camera pans, here are my much older brothers buffoonishly mugging for the camera as they sing they hearts out, strumming guitars earnestly … tight pants, Brylcream, pointy suede shoes all in evidence … but since they too are now both on the wrong side of middle age, it’s all too much for a sentimental fool like myself who willingly watches Alastair Sim’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ every year and weeps deeply and openly each and every time. Is this maudlin behaviour? I hope not. We see Scrooge’s anguish, and recognize it as our own. (That Fezziwig ball always pushes me right over the edge …)

Of course I will watch these home movies – I must – and I’m more excited now than hesitant since I’ve written about it; plus, I know many of my nieces and nephews will be keen to see.

Perhaps my real dread is to be seen as vulnerable, crying even – but as a writer, it’s just a bit late for that kind of concern isn’t it?

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