About Me

Hi everyone and thanks for visiting my site. I’m quite taken with the engraved joy that nostalgia imbues within us.

Tidbits About My Nostalgic Life

I spent the last 17 years traveling and living in faraway places. The US, Peru, Bolivia, Canada, Taiwan, China and pretty much all of South East Asia. Europe is still largely uncharted for me, but I’ll get there.

During these two breezy decades, I was alone for much of the time, not because I wanted to be, just because that was the nature of my type of travel. One thing is for sure, being on your own leaves your mind vulnerable to bouts of nostalgia.

I remember when I was hiking the Inca Trail in Peru and the one morning as I sipped hot instant coffee sweetened with condensed milk, my mind suddenly leapt back to when I was a boy with my parents visiting the Kruger Park in South Africa. In the mornings, we too drank this hot and soothingly, sweet coffee. It was the only time I ever drank it and it became known, forever after, as Kruger Coffee.

Another time when I was wandering the many corridors of the Met in New York, I came across a Fabergé egg display. Before I knew it, the opening sequence of the James Bond film, Octopussy, was vividly projected and played out in my mind. The sequence features the escape of a wounded British agent from East to West Berlin. As he reaches the safely of the British ambassador’s house, he falls down dead and drops a Fabergé egg on to the carpet.

It’s not the memory of Octopussy that makes this moment magical. Instead, of course, it’s who I was watching it with. My older sister, Eileen, was a huge fan of James Bond. I distinctly remember sitting in the playroom with her watching Bond running into a Tarantula web in the jungle, diffusing a bomb disguised as a clown and finally, some poor bastard getting French kissed by an octopus.

Fabergé egg. Octopussy. My sister. A feeling of closeness.

Nostalgia score, 8/10.

Read the full article on James Bond here.

We’ll Always Have Paris

As you’ll see, I blog about things that help me find my version of yesterday. Few things give me more joy than when I haphazardly stumble across something, a stored smile tucked away in the wings of my mind, that rushes me back to that exact moment. Rekindling with that moment might make me feel a little melancholic, but that’s okay because ultimately it gives me a sense of life continuity and social connection. In short, it just makes me feel better about who I am and where I’ve been.

Find Your Yesterday

This site is for anyone who is oftentimes lulled into a blissful state of nostalgia. Or for those who need a little nudge in getting there. In getting to those mental keepsakes, triggered by a song, a scent, perhaps a tattered toy, where a comforting warmth swells up within, making you feel closer to loved ones and just that little bit less lonely.

I do hope, however, that the nostalgic items I’ve chosen will unlock your own vault of magic moments. As you peruse through your past, your version of nostalgia will be unique to you, but perhaps the feeling will be similar to mine. And if that’s the case, then that further adds another layer of shared connection.

All the best,

Ridley

Founder of Find Yesterday

Copyright 2020 @ Find Yesterday