Rupert Loydell writes

HOW IT WAS

A week of nostalgia: photos of 70s skateboard parks and a book about post-punk. I even found online references to the record-shop in a greengrocers that I was beginning to think I'd made up.

Did we really learn to skate, to soar and glide across concrete? Did we drive across London and out to the sticks, in search of pools and ramps? We did, and now it's coming back to haunt me.

I thought I was over it all, but I'm not. The past still shouts out loud, and the post-punk voices make more sense than the ten minute pop stars of today. I even got a track by my old band online – the magazine's designer made a new video, said she liked the clarity and simplicity, the honest approach to its subject matter.

I'm reading the answers to the questions a poet has asked himself, about becoming old and irrelevant, of no use to younger poets today. You learn to twist it round, justify low print runs, don't bother doing any readings, get used to paintings stacked up in the studio and not selling like they used to do.

We are learning to be dishonest at work, in case the students complain. Just how anarchic or socialist can we be? What band videos can I play them? Can we ask them about their intentions, or talk about ideas of truth? I don't think so. It's not like it used to be, but perhaps it's best that it's not. Things change.

Books fall out of fashion, skateparks shut, the music fades and I can no longer keep up. The world buzzes and clatters around me, as I struggle to remember how it was. It doesn't matter that I broke my wrist in that pool, or got knocked off my pushbike there; that has nothing to do with today apart from my sense of self looking backward, thinking how much better it all was then.

Skate Park -- Christos Tsimaris