Southampton Trike Aardvarks

Some of the t-shirts my dad wears are ones that he had at University 1 million years ago. They are pretty faded and worn but the designs are pretty funny and you can make out what they say. Off the top of my head there are three in circulation: Southampton Dropouts (skydiving club - he actually didn't make the original of this but he did scan it to make a fresh one recently), a shirt for a band his friends were in called The Mystic Vegetarians and a shirt for a different band his friends were in called Southampton Trike Aardvarks. The band ones he actually made himself.

Each of these shirts has a story I've probably been told and forgotten but key elements remain such as my dad being in the skydiving club, one band of friends being vegetarians probably and another who had a motor trike somewhere in there. Recently however, my dad has found the original t-shirt printing screens he used to make them and has scanned them digitally so he can remake the shirts in higher quality. The first one he got printed was Southampton Trike Aardvarks and he offered one for my sister and I as well, which we accepted. As I write this I am wearing my own Southampton Trike Aardvarks shirt, despite not knowing anything at all about them. I don't think my dad has seen the friends in that band for a few years, and I have met a few in the Trike Aardvarks (however I can't remember which had the trike and the band has not been active since before I was born) and I have never met any of the Mystic Vegetarians.

The moral of the previous paragraph is that the number of people who this t-shirt holds any meaning to at all in terms of knowledge of the story is very low and arguably I am not one of them. However it could also be argued that the trike aardvarks probably haven't thought about it in many years and I have thought about my dad wearing the shirt and telling stories of the university days a lot more recently, so in terms of uh... net universe energy expended on concepts... I am actually winning out.

A brief aside I am adding in post - my dad actually dropped out of Southampton in his first year which makes the t-shirt quite a bit funnier. I asked him about the shirts while writing this post and he told me that this was the official shirt of the society, and there was another he had coveted but never managed to obtain, abbreviated to the "EFS shirt". After prompting he revealed this was a shirt banned by the University that had the Southampton coat of arms with the latin replaced with "eat fuck skydive". While no images of this exist on the internet he has planned to recreate it.

Remembering Things

I mentioned in the previous post about photography that I struggle to remember things even if they were really cool. Sometimes when I am getting rid of things I take a picture of them, so I remember it. Here are some things I have done that for:

The first is a gift when I moved schools in 2015 - my friends saved up some money to get a small driveable car for children and then turned out to have misread the price and were way off - so they took the money to poundland and spent it all there on miscellaneous items that were of no use, except for a plastic colander I used until it broke 2 years ago. In an attempt to make it thematic some items had Harry taped over the actual names of whatever they were, including this doll of one guy from The Wanted. Amusingly I think I still actually have this - when I was taking it out to the bin as part of an assortment of items I was getting rid of, this fell out and I took it as a sign that maybe I should hold onto it. The second image is when a housemate in 2020 winter was working at Amazon, and took a Christmas shift, on a day so notable they made hoodies for those who worked there. As there were no limits to how many he could take, he brought several home and handed them out. I kept this for 2 years but in classic Amazon fashion it was not at all comfortable or thick enough to really be worth wearing if you were cold, so when I had to cut down on some of my clothes this was an early one to go.

The trouble with this method is it relies on a past version of myself making the final call on whether something is worth remembering or not, and fuck that guy. I was once given a John Cena action figure when leaving my old school in year 9 and I can remember vividly what it looks like, however I did not take a picture of it when I got rid of it. If that memory fades, will I forget I ever even had it? The thing that I am most afraid of forgetting is the story, rather than the item itself, and the picture doesn't necessarily give those details anyway, just prompting a reminder, but even so whether or not something is considered important enough to remember is quite a subjective opinion and one that definitely changes over time. Things that happened more recently are less important because it feels like I won't forget it as easily, or the sentimental value has not built up to critical mass yet, and things that happened long in the past that I dimly remember I could have preserved via a photo and didn't.

Another issue with this method is that I am a big fan of preserving but I am not always motivated to do the sorting. This has resulted in most of the pictures I take of items to remember them being cast to the photo pile that is my immich timeline and unless I can remember the date I got rid of the item (rare) it will take 100 years of scrolling to find any (for example the above two images took me 100 years to find).

And do not get me started on things I can't take pictures of. Stories told by my grandparents when I was younger they're now too old to re-tell, conversations at the bar that had me laughing so hard I started tearing up, and similar ethereal experiences constantly tease me with hints that they happened and yet whenever I try to reach for them again they fade immediately.

Why remember anything anyway (working section title)

What I have discerned from introspection over the years is that while I like remembering things so I can re-experience them in the future, the main purpose is actually so I can share this experience with other people. My media is all tracked so I can tell people confidently about what I enjoyed the most. My photos are taken so I can show and tell other people things I have done. While it feels like all I am doing is hoarding data, there is a noble goal at heart. I think when I started writing this post I had grander designs of a message to give out (and also thought I'd have taken more interesting pictures of things I had got rid of) but it sort of culminates to the generic idea that actually not forgetting things is pretty cool. Most of the anecdotes I am able to share as a result of the hoard end up being minor parts of conversations that have probably been forgotten by those who heard and the context in which it was told likely by me as well. I have done quite a lot in my life and it pains me that I can't remember all of them but at least some of the best bits are findable with some effort. The shirts my dad wears are a link to his past, with friends he still sees and some he doesn't, and they're also a link to my past because of the experiences I've had with him as a result, and now they're also a link to whoever has read this post and knows my telling of the story.

I mentioned earlier as well about the idea of past versions of me having poor judgement on whether things are worth remembering or not, but he isn't all bad. There are many things that he did alright, such as setting up the NAS in the first place so I have easy ways of accessing and sharing photos illustrating pretty much my whole life, thanks to my parents being prolific photographers as well. I don't think I'm philosophical enough to do this justice but while I often get the melancholy feeling of seeing pictures of people I know when they were younger and able to do things they can't now for whatever reason, it often also gives a motivational feeling - there are still so many things I can do. It is encouragement to prioritise things that give me experiences I can talk about with others or just remember fondly and imagine I would be able to share, and this manifests across almost everything I do - reading books and watching shows so I can discuss them with others, visiting countries so I can recount the tales, programming tools that in theory other people could use but probably won't because they don't work and I don't advertise them. I often lack motivation, and feel like I'm wasting time, not doing enough to make the most of the time I have right now, and the guilt that this brings can make it even harder to do anything. Yet sometimes I will tell people about something I did on the weekend and they'll go "how do you get up to so much?" and it reminds me its all subjective and I should just do the best I can.

End

I'm not sure what the best way to wrap this up is but I think maybe it is that I'd like to have my own Southampton Trike Aardvarks and similar stories to pass on to whoever I talk to often when I am my dad's age. Obviously it is not too hard to formulate memories at all but having physical items loaded with stories that you can refer back to and recover is cool and awesome, so hoarding items or photos of items is good for this. I can look back at my university days and say I've played quidditch, I've volunteered at food banks, I've saved lives (and washed suncream out of people's eyes) at sport events, did a backflip, I learnt some video editing skills and have some cool logs of video games I have played with the pals. Admittedly several of those the images I have are of myself as well as items, most have items I've retained that are related as well. Now I just need to motivate myself to do work as well.