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

Walt Disney World Florida - it had always been the dream holiday, when I was young mum always said "if we win the premium bonds, will take you to Disney World". They never did of course! Then as an adult once kids little bit older we thought the dream holiday for kids - NOT! Have to get up at the crack of dawn to get to car park the size of a small country, to join a queue miles long, to then join more queues in the park for hours on end, the kids were exhausted and over heated just for a few minute ride, over priced food drink , massive portions! 2pm every day there was a thunder storm and park closed, false American people with smiles plastered on their face with pre programmed sayings eg "have a nice day" plastic grass even the benches were plastic wood effect, hated every single second of it could not wait to get home. Same day we got off the plane we headed straight for Thomas Cook in town and booked two weeks in the Caribbean to recharge and relax after such an exhausting holiday!

I recently revisited our local Household Recycling Centre (ie the tip) and was really disappointed, because it was shut.

Butterflies the series annoyed me intensely when produced in the 70s/80s, and even more when shown again recently. Ria was an utterly self-centred woman who took her comfortable existence entirely for granted while moping about her state of the art kitchen but never thought to take cookery lessons.
Oppressed? Not. Then went on to mess up someone else's life- the lover. Never watched long enough to discover how it ended.
Definitely not Brief Encounter.

My sister and I went back to the small Scottish town where we grew up after forty years' absence.

We enjoyed visiting the only friends (3 sisters and their families) left there, but the town itself was worse than we remembered it - and growing up there had been on the boring side.

We decided NOT to ring the doorbell of our childhood home, although we had both met the family our parents sold the house to in 1980. We decided we would rather keep our memories of the house than see the reality, in case it proved as great a disappointment as our childhood town and the two neighbouring cities.

Not quite the same but this time last year I read a book called the serial Killer's Wife. Last week we watched the series on tv. I was half way through the first episode when I told hubby that I must have been mistaken as it was nothing like my memory of the book -but no when I checked it was the same story. Even the ending was different.

No.

I think the point of this thread is how our perceptions as individuals have changed over the years, rather than the things themselves (towns and cities for example). The sitcom Butterflies was hugely popular, particularly amongst women. We saw Rea's "affair" as liberating but 50 years later we see her as oppressed or at least little more than an object to fulfil male needs. Someone else mentioned D H Lawrence whose writing seemed to break convention and yet it was essentially all about the male pursuit of sex. We've come a long way and been enlightened without even realising it.

Primrose53

Eritrea

We went to Nottingham in early Nov and were looking forward to it as when we lived in Leics we visited often and it was a fine city.

What a dump we found! Gangs of Somalian or Eritrean lads hanging around on street corners throwing their fag ends on the ground and spitting great mouthfuls of phlegm around. It was totally gross.

Litter and rubbish everywhere, tired and empty shops, roadworks everywhere and just not the Nottingham we remembered. Won’t go there again.

Never been there but sadly doesn’t sound worth a visit now.
The Sheriff would be outraged if he came back chasing Robin.

watermeadow

I was taken to the Natural History Museum at age nine and still vividly remember my amazement at the size of the blue whale.
Revisited when grown up and he had shrunk!

Still the largest mammal tho!😁

argymargy

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

😁I agree but mind you I thought that the first time I saw it.
I cringe at quite a few Only Fools And Horses now tbh.
About places, they say ‘never go back’ but that isn’t true of everywhere as there are some that seem to change very little.
For instance the IOW, the Lake District and some parts of Devon and Cornwall.

When I was a teenager I used to LOVE Hill Street Blues, I knew all the character names and all the names of the actors who played them, I was quite an expert on them!

Then a few months ago aged 59 I watched them on YouTube and switched off 1/2 way through episode one!

The Statue of Liberty is so small. Very disappointed.

Auntieflo

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.

I reread the Canaletto over Christmas. It still worked for me.Got really locked into them🙂

The big change for me was DHLawrence. As a teenager I regarded him as a guru on sexuality. Reading him twenty years later I realised that he knew absolutely NOTHING about women’s sexuality. It was all from a male viewpoint. What a bore he must have been in bed!😬

Went to visit a friend in a village we used to live in. Went past ‘our’ house.
The garden was a wilderness- not in a nice way. What a lot of wasted hours I put in.
I think that the saddest thing though was when my sister and I revisited our childhood home and went down a particular road.
We both independently took a huge breath at exactly the same point, just where a particularly smelly shop used to be!
The street now specialises in wedding dress shops, no smells🤧

GrannySomerset

I am reading AS. Hyatt’s “Possession” for my U3A book group and finding it hard going. I read it 35 years ago when it came out and thought it pretentious nonsense. Will I like it better now? The jury is definitely out.

I read Possession and found it compelling but odd. I then tried to read some other A S Byatt book and found them rather nasty. There seems to be a seam of perverted cruelty that runs through all her books.

I was taken to the Natural History Museum at age nine and still vividly remember my amazement at the size of the blue whale.
Revisited when grown up and he had shrunk!

Eritrea

We went to Nottingham in early Nov and were looking forward to it as when we lived in Leics we visited often and it was a fine city.

What a dump we found! Gangs of Somalian or Eritrean lads hanging around on street corners throwing their fag ends on the ground and spitting great mouthfuls of phlegm around. It was totally gross.

Litter and rubbish everywhere, tired and empty shops, roadworks everywhere and just not the Nottingham we remembered. Won’t go there again.

Visited the town I grew up in only to find it tired and run down. Drove past my old family home , it seemed small and drab , not the vibrant full of fun home I remembered. Bumped into an ex who in my memory was tall ,suave and charming only to find him a bit of a sad letch.
Lesson learnt , don't look back keep moving forward

Mine dates back to when I was 13; grammar school science teacher took class to the Science Museum in London where I was totally fascinated by Foucault's Pendulum (it shows Earth's rotation in real time). Could have stood there for ages watching it.

DH and I visited said Museum a few years ago, and not only had they moved the Pendulum from the main entrance hall but it was tucked away in a corner and was in fact quite dull ..

I am reading AS. Hyatt’s “Possession” for my U3A book group and finding it hard going. I read it 35 years ago when it came out and thought it pretentious nonsense. Will I like it better now? The jury is definitely out.

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!

Yes, I watched an episode about a month ago and really didn't enjoy it

Loved it originally

I think there are just more people in the world now than there were 40+ years ago, and they travel more.

Probably in 40 years time people who are young now will be saying much the same sort of thing about their 'revisited' holiday spots

Mind you, where we live now in Co Durham is very attractive and a wee bit of a tourist spot. I wouldn't have cared to live here 50 years ago when it was wall to wall coal mines, coking ovens and railway lines...

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.

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.

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