by Tabitha Hergest

Created on: March 02, 2010

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.  Then again, it never was.

You, if you care about the past - and you should; a person without a past has no future - don't wonder along a disused railway line without being haunted by the ghosts of the giant locomotives which used to heave passengers and freight along, often belching thick plumes of smoke upwards and outwards as they trundled their way inefficiently hither and thither.  You don't, if you are of a philosophical turn of mind which, being intelligent, you are, walk through a graveyard and wonder how the life of a person commemorated by a headstone have been lived.  Neither do you, when you see an old car - unless you have a heart of marble - see beyond the odd assemblage of metal, glass, rubber and plastic, to anthropomorphisation, perhaps based on someone who might have owned that same model, or an evocation of an era long gone, whose misty-eyed reminiscences again, haunt you.

The soul of mankind is built upon culture - the culture of our ancients, the culture of history; all living within us.  We are the past - this is, some say, what sets us apart from animals.  Yet we, ourselves, aren't hard-wired into history beyond our years - and even that history we have witnessed personally can be subject to the rosy glow of forgetfulness.  We must, therefore, connect through visiting the past - whether it be through visiting ancient monuments and historic structures, or else enveloping ourselves in any way we can.

The best way, for some people, is to recreate.

To take the venerable wreckage of the past, either automotive or otherwise structural, and to restore it to its former glory, is for some a homage to the Gods of history.  For some, it is a challenge - a giant jigsaw puzzle with a fair collection of pieces missing and a good chance the instructions are such as would give the expert cryptic crossword maven nightmares.  Such a puzzle also becomes a treasure hunt, a trawl around this autojumble and that scrapyard, and failing that, the other engineering shop, to assemble a prize offering, is often the most rewarding of occupations.  Oftentimes, it is combined with the knowledge that one's grandfather owned such a car, and that the object in question is somehow closer to the heart of the restorer than his ribcage.

But often, here is no accounting for the yearning which goes with such an occupation - for a yearning it is.  Nobody who knows the difficulties, the frustrations and the knock-backs of classic restoration goes into it without that yearning - that deep, primaeval yearning, that yearning that somehow the Gods of history should be honoured.

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