Qualia compilation 9: Summer, mid-1960s Isle of Wight

Here's another family-holiday qualia flashback that resurfaces frequently into my stream of consciousness; two summer holidays (1963 and 1964) on the Isle of Wight. One such moment occurred this morning. I was lying awake in bed – then suddenly, entirely unbidden, but maybe triggered by a congruent play of light on the retina and air temperature, I am back in the Victorian house that my parents and their friends had rented for two weeks over those two summers.

I have had this memory often enough in the recent past to check it out online. I remembered 'Bembridge, Isle of Wight', but in fact it was St Helens, a village just to the north of Bembridge. (Google Maps shows the house as being on Mill Road, close to the junction with Lower Green Road. Across the beautiful green, as classic a village green as one can get in the British Isles, was Upper Green Road, and on it the shops.

Here, I would badger my mother into buying me toys; and it was this memory which struck me this morning. There was a set of toy soldiers marked 'EMPIRE MADE' that she wouldn't buy me, because of the red paint of their tunics contained lead, and my baby brother might put them into his mouth. I came to see that embossed lettering, 'EMPIRE MADE' as a warning sign for children, a byword for dangerous and shoddy goods. 

Below: Isle of Wight, summer of 1964; my brother is one and half years old, with my father. Photographer unknown.

Another memory rolled in; a bright sunny morning when I woke early and my father spontaneously decided than he and I should go for a stroll down to the sea in Bembridge. We walked down Mill Road until we reached the marina; I recall the clanking of cables and ropes on the masts of the yachts moored there and the cries of seagulls. I was disappointed by the lack of a beach, However, this was more than made up for by the treat that followed; an open-topped double-decker bus came round the corner, my father hailed it at a request stop that was conveniently situated near us, and we boarded, going upstairs. As it was early, the bus was nearly empty, so we took seats right at the front, by the glass windscreen. The conductor came up to sell us our tickets, but the journey was very short; it was only two stops before we had to get off at the green in St Helens. Below: a bus just like this one! [Photo courtesy of Southern Vectis]

This is all totally credible. Memories are like that. But here's another flashback. It's Thursday evening on the działka, nice and warm. 

I step out of the shower. My right foot lands on the bathmat, my left heel lands on the cold stone floor. I'm glancing over at the towel rack. At that moment – PAFF! I'm in a hotel in Kansas City or Oklahoma City, mid 1950s; I'm a man in his thirties, the hotel is large and brick-built, from the end of the 19th century or early 20th century. The combination of haptic input (cold on the heel, warm air) and and sight (chromed towel rack on a tiled bathroom wall) brought a sensory congruence that I immediately recognised. For a fraction of a second I was there. It felt just as real as my memory of the Isle of Wight from 60 years ago.

[UPDATE morning 10 August 2024: In a hypnagogic state while waking, I suddenly become aware of an odour that I immediately associate with the house in St Helens on the Isle of Wight. There was an airing cupboard on the landing on the first floor in which my mother would place our beachwear and towels to dry overnight. A mixture of sea-salt, washing powder and human body. For a second, I was fully conscious of that smell and its precise location in space and time. Unmistakable. Many's the seaside holidays, but it was that specific one. I wake fully, and attempt to find that smell. Is it the skin on my upper arms or fingers? No. On the bedding? No. I cannot recover that precise sensation. Like a melted snowflake, it has evaporated.]

This time five years ago:
Quantum jumps, quantum luck and the atomic will

This time six years ago:
Under the sodium

This time seven years ago:
"Further progress? Hell yes!"

This time 16 years ago:
The 1970s and the 2000s