Instant nostalgia, and Camberwick Green

As a young kid the only children's television was very old re-runs on lunchtime BBC - entiled "Watch with Mother" - which was immediately followed by Listen with Mother on BBC Radio The Home Service. (Our small, monochrome, blurry TV also had a radio receiver built-in.)

TV comprised Andy Pandy, The Woodentops, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men and a handful of others. These had only a few episodes each and continually re-cycled - which repetition is, of course, perfectly congenial to the young child.  

Then when I was about seven years old, some new Children's TV programmes were made, including Camberwick Green. (These were filmed in colour, although initially broadcast in monochrome.)

I could see these new lunchtime programmes only in the school holidays, and already felt a bit alienated from them as I sensed they were pitched from kids younger than myself - not that that bothered me then, or now. 

Maybe it was partly that sense of having grown-up, and the new-fangled business of making fresh TV; but I watched the first broadcast of Camberwick Green with some, brief, suspicion; before being won over. 

And I recall that the title sequence and theme tunes seemed instantly sad and sweet, and loaded with nostalgia - even from the very first time I experienced them. 

It was instant nostalgia; and perhaps only at seven years old did it become possible for me, as a child, to feel such a thing. 

Later on, this emotion (or, more than an emotion) became a familiar accompaniment to many of the happiest and deepest fulfilments of life: a sense of inevitable loss, and the preciousness of the present moment. 

The title sequence of Camberwick Green - especially the theme music composed and performed by Freddie Philips - is exceptionally good. 

First a silent, earnest, clown winding the titles; and accompanied by a little arpeggiated glockenspeil tune-let (with one sour note, just like the instruments at school)... 

Then this week's main character rising from an old wooden music box (music boxes are a sure-fire way to evoke nostalgia in me); with its gorgeous aspiring melody, apparently played on two mandolins.

No wonder I still remember it.