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Always Donkey’s Years
What my parents’ obsession with the past says to me now, as I obsess over the past
Everything, it seemed to me, was “donkey’s years ago.”
My parents being my parents, it was usually television they were talking about, of course.
My parents being my parents, it was barely ever misty-eyed, romantic longing even for that.
And, you know, there were some pretty good things on TV in their formative years. Morecambe and Wise, Callan, The Avengers. Things that have generated huge amounts of enthusiasm since first being screened.
My father — who was the one most prone to using the phrase — would see someone or something on the telly, most likely during a repeat, and he would tell whoever was listening (with no obligation that anyone had to be listening) that this person or thing was from “donkey’s years ago.”
Was it a criticism? Certainly, he hated repeats. He hated anything he had seen before at any point in his life being foisted on him again.
Apart from the endless horse races, of course, which always had precisely the same narrative: his horse dying somewhere around the first hurdle, the better to be carted off and turned into glue before the end of the afternoon.
