Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

Reunions are in the air. In a few weeks time we are going to Hubby's 25th school reunion. And last weekend, two hundred people danced the night away in Belfast for the first (but I suspect not the last) Delta / Plaza reunion.

The Delta was a sort of underground club, colonised by Goths and Physcobillies and every other teenage tribe that lurked in the shadows in Belfast in the 1980s. It was filthy and probably a fire hazard. It opened after the pubs closed. I can't remember what time it closed at - I was never sober enough to be able to read my watch. It was brilliant, and it was awful. I was fifteen when I first went there and I felt like I had found my spiritual home.

Not so long ago, someone started posting photos on Facebook from the Delta days. Every now and then a picture would pop up with my name attached to it. I ignored them.  Interest grew, someone set up a fan page. People sent me the link. I ignored it. Inevitably, a reunion was organised. I ignored that too.

Part of the problem for me is, while I had some of the best nights of my life at the Delta, there were some very dark times too. I look back at my teenage years and wonder how I got out of there alive. But I have a problem with nostalgia in general. It makes me uncomfortable. When someone starts to wax lyrical about the 'good old days', it makes me wonder what is wrong with their 'here and now'. And I have no interest in re-formed bands from the 1980s and 90s. I don't want to listen to music from another lifetime. I like the person I am now much better than the person I was then.

Don't get me wrong - I don't want to get old before my time. And judging from the pictures on Facebook this weekend, everyone else enjoyed the reunion perfectly well, without analysing themselves into a tizzy. But I don't want to recapture a youth that, quite frankly, didn't have that much going for it first time around. Except for the fact that had it not been for the Delta, I might not have got to know that young man in the photo up there. Twenty five years on, he's still an handsome devil, and he's still my man. And we've both still got all our hair, despite the predictions of our parents.