A few days ago I found myself going through an old album I hadn't opened in a decade or two, looking for a specific picture...instead I ended up wandering around almost forgotten memories, some of them deliberately abandoned but others just neglected. I found this old ID card from my early twenties and I couldn't help wondering what ever happened to him? Apparently he was devoured in his early thirties by a much larger man, a rotund grotesque with buggered legs. What would have been the reaction of that me if confronted with this version? Horror of course but I can't help hearing Henry V's rejection of Falstaff:

"I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men."

But of course I never was Prince Hal even if I am now straight from central casting as a Falstaff. There are dangers in looking back too much, when much of the present is crap there's a danger of living there. We creatures who are doomed to only travel through time in one direction should remember that the past does not exist, nor does the future (although it, unlike the past is unknown and full of potential), only the present is real and that's where we have to dwell. Memories are real enough though and some of them should be treasured, brought out from time to time and savoured, riches no one can steal. There are lessons to be learned also in looking back, seeing how far you've drifted from your values and dreams, and perhaps changing course to find them again...even if the boat now leaks and has developed a distinct list to starboard.