Living in the Past

 Sometimes it feels like we're going backwards: Spurs struggling to beat footballing minnows in a Europa league qualifying match - that takes me back.  Yet it happened today.  Moreover, we're apparently going to re-sign Gareth Bale on loan.  At this rate, I'll be expecting to see Jose Mourinho sacked and replaced by Martin Jol.  (Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing - we had some good times under Jol).  It seems an eternity since I last spent Thursday evenings following Spurs' progress in the UEFA cup/Europa League, so used have I become to their Wednesday (and sometimes Tuesday) night antics in the Champions League.  It feels as if we are regressing.  Especially when our biggest signing of the current transfer window is a thirty one year old ex-player out of favour with his current club, despite being their world record signing seven years ago.  I have mixed feelings about Bale's return, on the one hand I fear that he'll be a shadow of his former self, (some of us remember Klinsmann's disappointing one season return back in the day), on the other, I desperately hope that he can bring the energy and skill which seems to have been missing from the team of late.  Or are we just regressing, going back to what once worked in the desperate hope that it might work again?  Which is, I suppose, a metaphor for life.

How often do you see it, people returning to places, relationships, jobs and the like, in the hope that the past can resolve problems in the present?  (A pretty neat segue there from football to a more general point, eh?)  But, as noted in the epilogue to Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 'the past is only for remembering, those who choose to live there lose sight of tomorrow'.  Wise words, indeed.  Nevertheless, it is always tempting to seek refuge in the past.  The great thing about the past, of course, is that it never changes - we always know what is going to happen, which is why going back there seems so attractive.  Particularly when the present, let alone the future, seem uncertain.  Which, I'm sure, explains why so many old TV programmes resurrected from the vaults proved so popular during the Covid lockdown, (OK, I know that broadcasters had little choice, with new production shut down, but the old stuff they had to fall back on proved surprisingly reassuring for audiences: no nasty surprises, nothing unexpected).  So, apart from Tottenham reverting to their inconsistent old selves and re-signing former players, what's brought on this bout of introspective musings about living in the past on my part?  Well, I suppose it has a lot to do with my current six month trial separation from work - it's early days but I can't deny that, at times, I've been feeling a bit rudderless, with no clear idea of where I'm going.  So, there's enormous temptation for me to start regressing to the past, trying to find reassurance by revisiting old haunts and acquaintances, in the hope of recreating past situations which made me happy.  So far, I've resisted because, as I've outlined above, such courses of action are futile.  For now, it is better to focus on the here and now and let the future sort itself out.   Unless you are Tottenham Hotspur, of course...