Have you ever revisited something - a place, a film, a book - and been hugely disappointed ?

When I first read the books of Barbara Pym. I loved them.

I tried to reread them about 15 years ago and found them affected mannered and quite unreadable. I wish I hadn't reread them and could have just lived with the memory that I had enjoyed them.

I think some books are 'of their time' and date very quickly - and Barbara Pym's fall in that category

Many moons ago I read a whole lot of gothic novels, the best of which I thought was Stoker’s Dracula. I reread it recently and thought it was a load of tosh.
We obvs develop a tosh radar as we get older.

🤣

We lived in Françe for 8 months of each year from 2015 - 2018, it was a truly idyllic four years. I’m still in touch with friends there, our ex landlady has offered us a free holiday, but I can tell, by pictures and updates from friends it’s changed a lot, the spell would be broken.
We’re not going back

Put it this way, you couldn't pay me enough to read Lord of the Rings again which I ploughed through in my teens and thought it was really good. I wasn't even on anything at the time

- like a bus I imagine Terribull? 🤣

BIG
Dawson creek

Well actually I was on the train with it FGT , but I wasn't on anything hallucinatory, I mean I should have been hauling that hefty tome about.

Butterflies.

I loved it when it first came out. Watched it again a while ago and got so angry with her for not standing up for herself and getting a life!

I was really pleased the Box of Delights was on BBC in December 2024 as I loved it when it was on in the 1980’s.

Well I have no idea what I saw in it it was very tedious and clunky and wooden acting.

My only excuse was I was in the depths of small child wrangling and I must have been sleep deprived!

Grannybags

Butterflies.

I loved it when it first came out. Watched it again a while ago and got so angry with her for not standing up for herself and getting a life!

Quite agree. Her family sneering at her cooking and she doesn’t suggest they do it themselves if they don’t like it. She goes on waiting on them.

After many years l visited a childhood home, a rather spooky Victorian house with a beautiful garden. It had been replaced with flats and parking. I was shocked at how cross l was. My next childhood home is listed, though they have turned the part where my father had an extremely dramatic death into a restaurant. I've not dined there

We visited Alice Springs on a trip round Australia.

Sadly, nothing like ‘A Town Like Alice’.

Not that I was really expecting it to be.

Monica, I love Barbara Pym! Except perhaps for two of the later ones, when she was trying to be more ‘modern’ and it just didn’t work. But her more sombre ‘Quartet in Autumn’ was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

TBH I consider the earlier novels, set in the 1950s or before, to be period pieces now, almost as much as Jane Austen’s, particularly Crampton Hodnet, which IIRC she started writing even before WW2 - in a world that was so very different. I’d still class it as a comedy classic.

As for films, , I do recall re-watching Georgy Girl, which I thoroughly enjoyed at the time, but later it seemed most dreadfully dated.

I’m another who read and enjoyed Lord of the Rings in the early 70s - I really don’t think I could get through it now.

The film It’s a Wonderful Life. Friends had praised it over many years. I thought it the most tedious load of guff.

We recently went to the Algarve. Not been there for 30 years. We revisited Armacao de Perra. The front was lovely but the little streets were nothing like they used to be. The gorgeous little restaurants and little shops and cake shops gone.

This is why there are some things I won't return to
Eg Fawlty Towers which I adored in 70s, but I'd not want to watch it again for fear of not finding it as funny now.
Ridiculously I 'accidentally' watched the entire Previn, Morecambe & Wise sketch (13 minutes!) and it was wonderful!

Yes, books. In my favourite charity shop, I discovered all 5 books by Elizabeth Jane Howard, of the Cazalet series. I remember reading them and loved the family saga type stories.
So I bought them all, and have been plodding through Vol 1.
I am hoping to read them all agin, as I now have time due to illness before and after Christmas.

Loved the cazalet series I wonder if I’d like them if I reread them? I watched it’s a wonderful life for the first time in years this December. It wasn’t half as good as I remembered it. I was quite disappointed

I was so excited to be visiting Bondi Beach. What a disappointment. We have better beaches in England.

Some 40 plus years ago we backpacked round some Greek islands with a toddler. Our favourite island was Santorini. It was quiet, not much traffic apart from the buses, the little 3 wheeler trucks and some mini buses belonging to the islanders who let out rooms and met the ferries, touting for business. Lots of mules around, carrying packages or ridden, with long ropes of bells tinkling as they moved. We especially loved Kamari beach, black volcanic sand, fishing boats drawn up at the waters edge and about half a dozen wooden tavernas. All in all it was idyllic.

We went back for a nostalgic visit about 12 years ago. OMG. It was horrific. Wall to wall traffic, continuous development along the main roads where before there had been vineyards and Kamari had been developed so much it was unrecognisable. No mules with jingling ropes of bells, I'm afraid, just car horns and exhaust fumes..😭

Interesting MaizieD and Jax. Seems as tourists we discover wonderful places, word gets round and commercialism then ‘spoils’ what was ‘once there’. Sad really.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Interesting MaizieD and Jax. Seems as tourists we discover wonderful places, word gets round and commercialism then ‘spoils’ what was ‘once there’. Sad really.

Yes, sadly we've found that too. Little places we visited and loved - only to return and find that they've been commercialised out of recognition.

I revisited the seaside town where I grew up. To say I was disappointed is putting it mildly. It was dirty, uncared for and had a lot of tacky shops. Bird poo decorated most of the buildings. I had not been back since the 60s so expect I had rose tinted memories. I will not be going back.