Nostalgia

Fifty years ago, when I was 11, I remember my father taking me to the cinema.

It was a double bill (as they usually were back then) of Monte Carlo Or Bust followed by the Italian Job.

And so, out of a sense of nostalgia, I repeated the experience at home tonight. For four hours I have giggled and sniggered as Terry-Thomas played the cad and bounder, with Eric Sykes as his hapless sidekick, cheating his way past rival Tony Curtis to try to win the Monty Carlo rally, while Pete and Dud, the two Indian Army Officers (stationed very much where my grandfather was on the North West Frontier Pass) used all manner of ridiculous inventions to do the same. 

And you simply can't beat the original Italian Job, with Michael Caine (you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off) and Benny Hill ripping through Noel Coward's money attempting to steel the gold in a Turin traffic jam.

So half a century later and I still enjoyed the double bill as much as the first time.

Next it may have to be M. Hulot's Holiday.

Who says nostalgia is a thing of the past?