The Safety (and Hotness) of Nostalgia...

I don't know about anyone else, but I've had a week filled with nostalgia. All inadvertent and accidental, but there's been a lot of ruminating on the past, gone on. 'Why?' I hear absolutely no one shout. Well, let me tell you anyway. Listen up!

I apologise for the blatant marketing here.
 I spent ages looking for a gif of sporting action,
but this was all I got. This is England's Goal
Attack, Helen Housby. I watched her score a
shit-tonne (technical term) of goals against
South Africa on Thursday evening.
Hugely impressive.

On Wednesday I watched a netball match on the telly. It was electric. Mostly due to the exciting, fast paced nature of the game (shout out to South Africa and Uganda for keeping me enthralled during that first match) but also because it dawned on me that netball is the only sport that anyone has both taught and encouraged me to play. It was on the curriculum back in the day. I had to do it. Someone* bothered to show me technique and hammer home rules. That was what made the match instantly captivating as I happened to chance upon the channel. I was immediately sucked in. (It also explained why I had paid no attention and felt zero emotion to the marvellous achievements of the England cricket team the week before. I hadn't a scooby what was going on.) So, the netball was great. It took me right back to the summer of 1989, when my life's sporting achievements peaked. I won a Winners' Medal in the Rainhill interschool Netball Tournament, playing Goal Defence. A glorious time, a WINNING time. This week brought it all back. I have been working on my netball footwork ever since.

Click here for the trailer, should you wish to jump onboard.

Then on Thursday the new Top Gun trailer was released. I had read reports of this film since it went into production, and my feelings were firmly in check. I don't like the trend of bashing out a sequel to a long ago hit, at the expense of new creative endeavours. It feels like cheating; the easy option. So I hadn't felt any need to gush at the idea of an older, potentially wiser Maverick, and all the aviatory testosterone-fuelled antics that he would undoubtedly get up to. I was happy to leave it be. But then I saw the trailer. The slowed-down but instantly recognisable score was all it took. A few shady shots of a superior officer, some fighter jet whooshes through the air, and the hint of the cockiness that Tom Cruises' Maverick embodied, and I was ALL OVER IT. I was twelve again. Back then I had a more than life sized poster of TC in his leather jacket next to my bed (it was a head and shoulders shot, but sixteen times the size of the magazine it came in. His head was as big as my pillow) and I was obsessed. I imagine I'll be obsessed again, despite my early feelings on the matter. It took one view of the trailer, and I was back in the danger zone. Feeling the need for speed, and ready to take a walk in the park, Kazansky. Anyway, that was Thursday.

The initial reason I've been living in the past all week actually started on Monday. Monday is one of my full-on writing days, where I spend it glued to my laptop, trying to come up with an entire chapter before tea time. Except that also means I take Twitter breaks occasionally. Every now and then. Just to refresh, you know. At some point on Monday, Caitlin Moran tweeted...

By the time I read it, there were loads of responses. Gif after Gif, YouTube clip after YouTube clip, Caitlin retweeted the best, whilst the rest could be seen on her timeline. It seems there were more 'genuinely hot moments' in TV and film than we'd all previously assumed. Many of them were as far away from obvious porn as it got. I spent far too long that day, reliving great moments from the past. Moments like the one in Pride and Prejudice, when Mr Darcy shows the hint of a smile when Elizabeth is kind to his sister. The moment Elio steps towards Oliver in Call Me By Your Name. The look between Lucy and George in A Room With a View, right before they have a big old snog in the field. Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Show, kickstarting my unwavering love of guyliner. Any scene in Dirty Dancing where Baby has agency away from her family, and Johnny is there for it. Stuart and Nathan in Queer as Folk. There were mentions for Christian Slater in Heathers, Rik Mayall in Blackadder, David Bowie in Labyrinth, and the Sound of Music's Captain Von Trapp when he dances with Maria and turns from a grumpy, authoritarian parent, into the sexy love interest of a soon to be ex-nun. The list was pretty exhaustive. But look. I've rambled on long enough. Check some out some of them below!

Pride and Prejudice. The hint of a smile.

Call Me By Your Name. Many memorable moments here, tbh.

You tell him, Frances!  No one should call you Baby at your age!

Maurice was my first introduction to Merchant Ivory films and EM Forster. It led teenage Me to seek out the other books and films. So many moments to choose from.

It's the moment EVERYTHING changes. The Sound of Music. Sexual tension AND nuns.

Not strictly the distant past yet, but this is one of a trillion hot Fleabag clips I could have used. Richard Chamberlain - fiction's other sexy priest - also came up a lot.

Oooooh the sexual tension! It's all too much.
Before Sunrise. Giving me life since 1995.

There were so many clips and suggestions to watch from my youth. So for large parts of Monday afternoon, that's exactly what I did. It was the ultimate Internet rabbit hole. Of course, I had to stop at some point. I had work to do. But in order to fully get it out of my system, I knew I'd have to tweet my own offering. So I cast my mind back over my favourite films and TV. I realised I have many 'hot moments from film' that I could have used, but in the end I went with this. Jesse and Celine in Before Sunrise. In the booth in the record shop, standing close, listening to music. Everything unsaid, and still to come. HOT HOT HOT. That is all.

Enough of all this backwards thinking, though. I didn't plan any of it. As I said at the start, my week in nostalgia was inadvertent and accidental. It just seemed to be the way it went down. On Saturday I joined the March for Change in London (No to Boris, Yes to Europe!) to add my voice to the crowds. Maybe, when I'm feeling utterly dissatisfied with the way politics is playing out at the moment, it makes sense to relive more carefree times. Maybe reliving some teenage or childhood stuff for a bit, is a safe and sensible way to navigate through the current global political turmoil. Or maybe I just like wasting time on the Internet. Who knows. 

Have a lovely week, folks.

*That someone was Sr. Kathleen. A netball legend as well as Headteacher.