Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1994, late October, and the balm of September has started to yield to a bite in the air, and the freedom of summer has given way to the impending approach of the cold cosiness of winter, with the promise of red wine by crackling fires and the crown of Christmas on the horizon.
On the edge of the city centre, in a square under the gaze of the imposing main University Building - which resembles a 1970s industrial complex more than a seat of learning - a young women and a young man - in many ways a boy and a girl, really - stand by the ruins of some ancient Greek temple, or some medieval Byzantine church - it’s not really clear which. It is a tender moment as, in a half-embrace, they stare into each others’ eyes, and she tells him she could fall for him.
It’s the happiest he thinks he’s ever been, and he responds that he already has fallen for her.
This is the first week of their romantic relationship, but they‘ve spent the previous six weeks in each others’ company nightly, and it had been brewing for a while - long goodnight hugs which seemed to least for the best part of an hour, evenings sat on the seawall sharing bottles of cheap wine, bitching harmlessly about Belgians - before they’d finally kissed a week earlier after a night on the piss. And he’s sure of one thing - he’s falling in love and he hopes it never stops.
It did, seven months later, after she’d moved back to England and he’d stayed behind. It was a painful break-up, but they were at the age where you get up, cry and drink for a few weeks, and then move on. Which is how it played out. But rarely was there a moment like that again.
I write this because I’ve semi-accidentally found myself on holiday in Thessaloniki, the first time since I left* in 1995, and, yesterday, completely accidentally, happened upon the square. It was like a smack in the face with a Tardis made of love and tears.
I’d planned to visit the square as part of my two-day nostalgia-fest before heading to the beach anyway, but on my own terms and in my own time. But it also wasn't as I remember.
The square is smaller than I recollect, there are more trees, fewer ruins.
And I’m no longer full of the joys and hope of youth, but the vinegar and pessimism of age.
Imagine Romeo survived but became a Victor Meldrew, although with more swearing and fewer cardigans. And whereas VM is riled by the minutiae of the modern world, I’m shaking angry fists into the gap left by childood lies like God and meritocracy, a gap filled, paradoxically, by the abyss of futility. It can add a band of black to the rainbow of life, I must admit.
Enough of the square is as remembered to open the wounds of wistful longing, but so many differences to remind me that memory is less reliable than I was in that relationship.
In fact, despite the fact I lived here for almost a year, my memory of the city as a whole and the experience of it this time are so different they could compete with FYRE in terms of the publicity/lived experience divide.
There are lots of details as I remember them. Thankfully, or I’d have to finally face my slippery grip on reality. But in many ways it’s like visiting a completely new city.
And it’s made me a more tolerant person. Tolerant of Brexiters who long for the Britain of yesteryear. Tolerant of all those people who post When I Was A Child Everything Was Better memes.
Because it’s clear the mind lies. We remember things as we want, to confirm what we want to believe. We romanticise the past when the present doesn’t deliver.
And, it seems to me, as we fall headlong into the abyss of Brexit, it is a love of Britain coloured by childhood memories of the Famous Five, all-white public schools and the innocence of the biscuit game, but forgetting the horrors of the Glitter Band, repeat episodes of Duty Free and the culinary assault of a Vesta curry*** that drives the ERG and the various other gammons who can be found screeching ‘Brexiiiiit’, masturbating furiously over old photos of Maggie T while smearing fistfulls of Jam Roly Poly over their fat, pinky-red bodies.
Either that, or they’re actually mentally-ill fascist apologists. Either makes sense.
*Yeah, I was the boy. Even I had a soul once.**
** Metaphorically
***Look them up if you have to. And shudder.
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