A throw away line in the new Channel 4 drama series, “Ackley Bridge” made me laugh last week.

The character “Nana Booth” admitted to her teenage granddaughters  that she had kissed a girl when she was about their age and that ever since this had happened she was reminded of it whenever she ate a sweet tasting “Murray Mint”

The line made me think about how often a happy or traumatic event in our lives can be permanently associated with a product; or place; or time of year; or in the face of another person; which can cause us to seek it out or avoid it depending on the circumstance.

A few years ago, I went through the traumatic experience of losing my job  with matters coming to ahead just as I was about to go on annual leave for the summer.

For many years, the journey south at the point at which I was going on holiday each year, brought back intense feelings within me of anxiety which had nothing whatsoever to do with the here and now, but a throw back to a time of crisis.

These associations which trigger within us the past, have become for me contextualized by the present, and perhaps too the passage of time which means that I am not a prisoner of it.

So the learning perhaps is to hold on to only those associations from the past which re-kindle the soul in the present, perhaps a “Murray Mint” whilst letting old associations with trauma be quietly and gently replaced by the present itself.

My next blog will be: Companion Seat

William Defoe