I have to face up to the fact that I have finally reached an age where, for my contemporaries at least, looking back has become a popular pastime.  I can’t think of the last social occasion I attended that didn’t have the conversation starter ‘Do you remember?’ dropped in at some point in the proceedings.  It is a social comparator that groups generations together. 

This isn’t however the rosied reminiscences of close relatives or lifelong friends.  It is instead the gauntlet of a ‘Kim’s game’ challenge to see who can recall in the most detail the collective artefacts of childhood from twenty or thirty years ago.  Not unlike Trivial Pursuit there are a whole range of categories in this game from which to choose: from food to music to fashion to toys and games to television.  The next time you hear ‘Do you remember?’ be warned, competitiveness is fierce and there are experts in their field lurking behind the most inconspicuous façade.  

One friend of ours can sing with note for note perfection the signature tunes of almost every kids programme made between 1970 and 1985 – whether or not he can remember the actual programmes.  My husband can recall every toy he ever owned or coveted along with great swathes of dialogue from He Man and other cartoons of the era.  Another friend can recite whole advertising campaigns for products the rest of us don’t even remember the existence of.  None of them are prepared to be outdone in their pursuit of victory.

Having played several versions of this game I’ve come to the conclusion that throughout my childhood and adolescent years I wasn’t really paying attention.  I assumed that I was but my memory tells a different story.  It seems that I unwittingly was the class dunce, only along for the ride and with no hope of graduating.  If I’d realised that my formative years were to become the subject of a social exam perhaps I would have put in more hours of study.  Now I discover that there is a crash course study aid to help me and others like me.

Unlike previous generations we have technology to support our unquenchable thirst for nostalgia.  We don’t have to rely on hazy, fading memories; the real thing has been posted on the Internet.  Youtube has thousands of grainy video clips lovingly converted for the digital age so that we can, if so inclined, watch hours of 1980s adverts.  There are whole websites such as tv.cream.org and tv-ark.uk dedicated to archiving every television programme ever made - lest we forget.  There are published anthologies of our childhood and teenage magazines.  There are books and websites devoted to our childhood toys and we can even buy them back, courtesy of ebay, from other less nostalgic adults who kept their childhood in the original packaging and are now raising cash to boost their Swiss bank accounts.

The memory game is not one that I really enjoy, maybe because once started it’s infuriatingly addictive and I’m no good at it.  In the advert round my vague and patchy memories include: a Cadbury’s chocolate fingers’ advert which had something to do with ‘Harry the Spider’s coming out party’; a Baxter’s Soup advert with the closing line ‘no Hughie, this’ll be the pea ‘n’ ham’; and a drag-voiced cartoon fairy pronouncing ‘then learn to swim young man, learn to swim’.   Sound familiar?  I thought not.
In the TV round my memories are even more esoteric.  I can, when prompted of course, remember most of the programmes played in this game.  There are the usual childhood standards such as Mr Ben and Andy Pandy: wonderfully nostalgic to recall but everyone remembers those, so no points there.  Then there are the slightly more obscure ones such as The Singing Ringing Tree or a weirdly dubbed eastern European version of Cinderella; you only score points if the other players actually remember them too.  The whole purpose of the game is to remember something that no one else in the group does until a triumphant you jogs their sluggish memories.  My trump card is a 1980s ITV series about spies with a lead character called Willy Wigglesworth - try Googling that and see where it gets you!  Actually I did have to Google it to find out that the programme was called Cover and only rates a couple of lines in TVCream.  I’ve never met another soul who can recall it at all so as a point scorer it’s a risky play and not likely to win the game.  However playing this card is a good finisher because unless another player comes up with a star card quickly, enthusiasm wanes and the conversation moves swiftly on.

Generations to come will not have this problem because the Internet is fast becoming a collective human external hard drive.  They will only have to remember the key words needed to send a search engine running in the right direction and their past will be downloaded ready to relive all over again.  No longer will they suffer the agony of trying vainly to grasp the gossamer threads of distant memories and the ecstasy of collectively spinning them into something shared and tangible.  No more will they wake at 3 a.m. with the answer to some previously confounding memory search brilliantly clear to discover sleeplessly that the moment has passed.  The answers to all questions will be only seconds away. 
So the next time someone says ‘Do you remember?’ don’t worry if you weren’t paying attention – head for the Internet!