A day for nostalgia

Any abysmal day - dark, darker, wet and wetter. Any outdoor photograph would be a study in 500 shades of grey. Just the day to wallow in the nostalgia of brighter, warmer times.

46 years ago the recently wed Talpas flew in a BOAC VC10 to the Fiji Islands ; they were to be our home for several years. We spent some of our happiest times in that enchanted place and the memories haunt us still, in the nicest possible way. On a day such as this I like to look through the things that we had brought back to Scotland, the fans, the mats, the tapa cloth and the shells and seeds picked up on the white coral beaches. The big fellow is a the shell of a giant triton, Charonia tritonis . They are sometimes known as triton's trumpets because the South Sea islanders use them as as a musical instrument.

They all help keep the memories alive, because, as June Knox Mawer so eloquently put it in her writings on the South Seas:

"With every day that passes the figures on the shorelines grow smaller. The smells of the land grow fainter too, woodsmoke and frangipani, the coconut oil and the hot moist green of the inland forest. The sound of drumming is dying away, the flood of singing voices, the haunting bass and treble of ocean and lagoon."

#afternoon #wednesday #memories #january #triton #fiji