Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Suzanne Owen, Reader at Leeds Trinity University, who used to be our External Examiner for Religious Studies at Kent. Suzanne talks about how she is always excited to see what other institutions are doing and we learn about how walking is a counterpoint to her day. 

We learn about Suzanne’s creative writing work and whether she can ever publish it. We talk about the different skills involved and how it can be like being a detective.

Suzanne was, back in the 1980s, a DJ in San Francisco. She was studying radio technology at the time and played punk and new wave.

She has researched indigenous traditions and was once a tutor in Canadian Studies. Suzanne’s first post in Leeds Trinity was in World Religions and she talks about why she is critical of the category.

When she was 5 years old she had an encounter with a wolf and no one knew she was missing or seemed to care, and Suzanne reflects on how this turned her into an outsider and a non-conformist, even an anarchist. She joined the Theosophical Society in Edinburgh, which helped develop her interest in the study of religion.

Both of her parents were music fans, and Suzanne reveals that ‘London Calling’ by The Clash completely grabbed her. She also played bass in a punk band in her last year at high school and subscribed to the Stranglers fanzine.

Suzanne talks about non-attachments to things and how Facebook is a repository of her life. We also learn why she didn’t follow a career in photography. We talk about our subject areas being under pressure and how having an interest somewhere else that can sustain us is so important.

Suzanne has never been tempted to go to a school reunion and we learn what her younger self would have wanted to do.

Towards the end of the interview, Suzanne reflects on how she was a latchkey kid which meant she had adventures in the hills, but she also felt neglected and she was bullied. This has made her feel more independent and any nostalgia she feels is that she had that space. We learn why today the present is the best place to focus, while looking at the past as sources of creativity.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Suzanne Owen and Chris Deacy and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is Jennifer Uzzell, who is studying for a PhD in Durham, has done a Masters degree at Lampeter, and used to teach full time in a secondary school. Jennifer’s original background is in theology and biblical studies, when she did her undergraduate degree at Durham. We learn about how her interest in Hinduism developed and how Jennifer is a Senior ‘A’ level examiner.

Her latest research is on Druids and their attitudes towards death and dying. We talk about how on many levels she is squaring circles.

We learn about how she became involved in the funeral director business which in some respects could be construed as a form of therapy. She didn’t see a dead body prior to working in a funeral home, and we find out how Jennifer does the job and how she has the right resources to do it and how she has a vocational role both to the bereaved and the dead.

We talk about how Jennifer’s job impacts on her research and vice versa, and we talk about the different ways of conducting funerals that work for each family – including juggling and drinking whisky in one case.

She devoured Greek mythology as a child and she talks about the paucity of work on non-Christian traditions when she was at university. Jennifer has always been interested in how words are used in translation, and she talks about why she considers herself an anthropologist of religion and being aware of watching herself watching. She discusses also being an insider both as a Druid and a funeral director.

We talk about the key role of fiction in paganism and of re-enchantment, and about the importance of myth and magic and folk horror.

Towards the end of the interview, Jennifer talks about the way funerals can be a way for families to reconnect, and we discuss the role of connecting with an imagined past and about Jennifer’s work in historical re-enactment.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Jennifer Uzzell and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

The tables were turned on me for this week’s Nostalgia Interviews podcast – as I am the guest. Pamela Petro, who did such a fantastic interview with me earlier in 2021, asks me about my background (and we talk about why I don’t sound Welsh), why I used to emulate great radio presenters and newsreaders and why I ended up in academia if I always wanted to be on the radio.

I talk about my career path, the dream that never went away, the bridge between broadcasting and teaching, and how this all dovetailed during lockdown when I would record my lectures like doing a radio show.

I talk about my first university memory and recount my memories of the first day at Lampeter, which dovetailed with buying a bed for my sister, and why I came close to crying. Friday 4 October 1991 was the beginning of the rest of my life.

Pamela asks me what the song is that sums up my student days (the answer may surprise you), and I talk about the 1992 Lampeter Arts Hall Christmas disco when I danced really badly to the Human League and how it led to a particularly memorable experience at the Quarry club in Lampeter the following Tuesday…

I discuss how I wasn’t in a good place 5 or 6 years ago and, through my work on Nostalgia, I have wanted to return to the prosaic, humdrum stuff from my undergraduate days and to say thank you to those friends from that era, and how one episode in particular was the template for me becoming involved with student support many years later.

I then talk about my diaries and how and why I have been annotating my past, and what it says about the difference between experience and memory. I refer to the diary as being a corrective against having a rose-coloured lens reading of the past. We also talk about what makes Lampeter special by virtue of what for other people might be its perceived limitations.

We then focus on the role of memoir and finding a way to connect a personal story to universal experiences. Specifically, I talk about why the diary became a form of salvation after I met somebody in 2016 who didn’t turn out to be who she promised to be, and the diary turned me into a detective in my own story. I talk about how the diary is both primary source, secondary source and work in progress.

The interview finishes with me being asked what I would do if God gave me the chance to satisfy one desire!

It was a huge pleasure to meet Alison Robertson for this week’s Nostalgia Interview. Alison’s research is in the area of subcultures – specifically BDSM and kink as religious practice. Alison refers to how this is a notoriously sensitive area – and about how hard it can be to get people to talk to her. 

Alison discuss the insider vs. outsider question and we learn that Alison is fascinated by areas where boundaries blur. Her participants might reject the label ‘religion’ but not the things that Alison believes make it a religion. Some people have a very fixed understanding of religion.

Alison talks about the therapeutic or confessional benefit for her participants when they talk about BDSM, and how some of them both wanted to be identified and didn’t want to be identified at the same time.

We discuss stereotypes and the judgements that people think may be attached to what they do, and we look at this in the context of nostalgia and the past.

Alison’s first degree was in Law and she is still in touch with a friend from playschool. In her experience as a PhD candidate she found that the edgier you are the better. But in an employment sense people tend to be more wary – and Alison recounts the experience from when a referee once refused to write a reference for Alison because they didn’t want to be associated with kink.

We talk about assumed binaries and how it applies to pleasure vs. pain. Alison tells us why she has a problem with the category of non-religion and about the different uses we give to the same word.

Alison reflects on how at school religion was put in a container and cut off from everything else, and that this does Religious Studies a disservice. She did a PGCE RE and we learn how she became interested in studying kink and why she would like it if more people studied it.

Then, towards the end of the interview Alison discusses positive memories and the definition of nostalgia, and how some words are negative and not all positive, e.g. intimacy, and the way kink can be a way of reshaping trauma. We end the interview by talking about the way Bat out of Hell has helped her understand fandom – and how there is nothing random about fandom!

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Alison Robertson and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is Declan Kavanagh, Senior Lecturer in 18th Century Studies in the School of English at the University of Kent. Declan’s specialism is in the area of poetry and political pamphlets from the period and how they address questions of masculinity, nationhood, gender, sexuality and disability. 

We talk about surviving lockdown and how it impacted on Declan personally, and about how he became interested in the history of arrangements of power around gayness, queerness and transness.

Declan talks about the rage but never any sense of shame over his sexuality, and he is not sure that as much ground has been won in recent decades as the legislative success of, say, same-sex marriage might suggest. There is, for example, still transphobia, and there are questions over whether feminism speaks for trans women.

He reflects on the toxic and restrictive notions of gender which are impacting on people and how, although trans people are everywhere, media representations to this end are not always helpful. We talk about Section 28 and the notion of queerness as being in flux.

Declan remembers watching breakfast TV as a child with the Spice Girls being interviewed, and we learn that he used to be into heavy metal and The Smiths. We also hear Declan’s reaction to me mentioning that Cilla Black supported the Tories, and he gives us his thoughts on cancel culture and why he thinks Morrissey is a racist and how we shouldn’t be afraid to call out racism.

Declan discusses how nostalgia comes from a sense of loss and uncriticality which is dangerous. The culture wars, he says, are about nostalgia, and he recalls people he knows who are stuck in their past. He says he has always been inclined to look towards the future.

Towards the end of the interview Declan reflects on what it felt like to be four, and we learn about friendships from over the years, and how he survived his schooldays, as well as why he is okay with people misrepresenting him.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Declan Kavanagh and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is Kazuyo Matsuda, who is an architect, working in the UK for the last 20 years and practices the Japanese martial art of Kendo which she has been teaching for over two decades. Kazuyo talks about how Kendo, which originated in Japan in the 13th Century, was first seen in the UK at the Japanese Village in Knightsbridge built in 1885.

Kazuyo has been in the UK since 1993 and before that lived in Japan. She came to the UK initially to study Fine Art and we learn how she switched to Architecture.

She has three sisters, her father was a solicitor and her mother still lives in Japan. We learn about her memories of growing up, playing touchball and going on adventures in the days before computer games. She went to kendo twice a week with her sister and ended up sticking with it.

Kazuyo talks about how lockdown impacted her – and how the experience taught her how important exercise was. We learn that Kendo is a safe sport, relatively speaking, and how she managed to teach it online during lockdown, finding some funny ways to be inventive.

She discusses MTV and seeing Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper in concert, and also practising the piano and her love of Italian culture, as well as being a fan of The Karate Kid.

We then turn to Kazuyo’s architecture work which involves designing buildings. She is interested in the challenge in seeing what lies behind buildings and Kazuyo talks about Portmeirion where people’s memories were distorted via space. She also discusses the idea of knowing people as a building.

Kazuyo talks about how architecture has changed since it became possible to build 3D models using a computer and she speaks about how she thinks theory and practice need to merge.

We learn about her earliest memories and how memories play an important role in architecture and dreams, and we talk about negative experiences, e.g. relating to sad childhood experiences and the need for longing, including connecting with people with whom we are no longer in the same physical space.

Then, at the end of the interview Kazuyo talks about learning to make the future better via revisiting the past.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Kazuyo Matsuda and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is Penny Sartori, a medical researcher and teacher in the field of near-death experiences who did a PhD in NDEs at Lampeter. Penny used to work in the Intensive Therapy Unit in Morriston Hospital in Swansea where she was upset about the death of her patients and which led her to want to research more about death. 

Something that Penny discovered is that the neurophysiological assumptions that better fitted her nurse training didn’t seem to be an adequate or sufficient model for understanding the phenomena. She found that talking to patients about what they were feeling and what they said face to face was an eye opening experience. They appreciated the fact that she was taking their experiences seriously whereas in many cases their relatives might dismiss their testimonies. It was a form of empowerment for them which counterbalanced the trauma of having come close to death.

Penny talks about the negative experiences which some of the patients had, and she reveals what her colleagues thought about her research and the importance for nurses to recognize and validate these experiences and support their patients.

We learn how this ended up becoming the PhD with Paul Badham as supervisor and how this all changed her life. Her work on NDEs has enabled her to become more appreciative of her life and it taught her to live in the moment.

We talk about NDE characteristics, some of the findings of her research, including the seeing of deceased relatives and whether all of the patients she was studying had clinically died. We learn that she is interested in the extent to which NDEs give meaning to patients’ lives, and Penny discusses the lack of acceptance in nursing circles of these experiences. Do we understand the dying process sufficiently?

Penny tells me about the impact of her research and the book, which was serialized in a national newspaper, had on her personally. We also find out what made her enter the nursing profession in the first place and how everything has fallen into place in her life since.

Finally, towards the end of the interview Penny talks about growing up in Swansea where she used to enjoy going surfing, and we hear about her love of 80s music. We learn that she is in touch with her best friend from school, why she enjoyed the solitude of lockdown, and why Penny is a looking forward kind of person.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Penny Sartori and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is Rachel Gefferie who works at the University of Kent as Diversity Mark Officer and is also doing an Anthropology PhD. Rachel, who is originally from Suriname and later moved to the Netherlands, talks about why calendar and anniversary dates and photographs are so important. She can relive the original feelings she had when she looks back at pictures.

Rachel tells us why she selects happy moments and why the camera is like an extended eye. We also discuss how other people may interact (differently) with them, even those in the same picture, and Rachel talks about the role that pictures play in her cultural background. They represent the most important thing in one’s life and all of one’s accomplishments.

She talks about the time she was asked what the object was from childhood that means the most to her, and it was when she won her first book for writing a story. And we find out about Rachel’s attachment to objects, e.g. jewellery. She has a necklace that reminds her of her time in Colombia where she was diagnosed with a heart defect and she was told that she didn’t have long to live. She was told to do something that she wanted to do as she didn’t have much time left. She ended up in Saint Martin where she had a second opinion and discovered that she wasn’t terminally ill.

The necklace symbolizes her having new life and having a second chance and needing to make it work. She now faces sickness in a completely new way, and Rachel talks about how she has become more cautious if she is separated from her husband.

Music played a big role in her upbringing, and we learn that lockdown had a huge impact on the connections which live music brings. We find out whether there were any inspiring artists. Rachel discusses dance hall and music of Jamaican origin, and she discusses a photo that she brought with her to the recording of herself with the son of Bob Marley, Ky-Mani Marley.

Rachel talks about her educational journey. She worked as a social worker in Saint Martin and taught in Suriname. She then went on to do a Masters in Social Anthropology and now her PhD. Surprisingly, Rachel explains how she ended up in Canterbury due to Google.

At the end of the interview, Rachel talks about how she believes that, in the context of her Christian faith, everything happens for a reason. The health diagnosis was an attack on her faith but afterwards her faith returned. And, Rachel explains why she lives through the past, in the present, looking at the future.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Rachel Gefferie and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is radio enthusiast Noel Tyrrel, founder of the David Hamilton’s Hot Shots fan site and someone who has an encyclopaedic knowledge and collection of vintage radio shows.

Noel grew up with radio, and we learn why the person who awakened his interest was David Hamilton. We talk about why Junior Choice was so special and whether the sort of radio presenting that Ed Stewart and David Hamilton epitomized is in ascendance any more. We also find out why David Hamilton is called ‘one take Hamilton’.

Noel talks about what it was like to meet his radio heroes and we hear about the time Noel was at the supermarket checkout and who should ring to apologize for not playing ‘Paddy McKinty’s Goat’, which Noel had requested for his young daughter on the Christmas edition of Christmas Junior Choice, but Stewpot himself.

He talks about what was so clever about the Jimmy Young show, and how we could never work out what JY’s political sympathies were. We discuss JY’s previous incarnation as a crooner and we learn what Noel thinks about JY’s successor, Jeremy Vine.

Both of Noel’s parents were actors and through them he met many showbiz types. He talks about Simon Dee and we find out why Noel would categorize himself as a frustrated journalist. We learn why Noel so enjoys disseminating David Hamilton’s BOOM Radio show on social media and writing a synopsis of each programme.

He explains why he is a sounding board for David Hamilton and we find out whether Noel himself would be interested in doing a radio show of his own. He tells us why radio plays are better than their TV counterparts, why radio will far outlast TV, and why radio is so wonderful because one can listen to it while ‘on the move’.

At the end of the interview we learn whether Noel is a looking back or looking forward type of person, what he thinks of Benny Hill and Talking Pictures TV and why he respects things for the period in which they were made.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Noel Tyrrel and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

My guest this week is Babiche Deysel, Executive Headteacher at Petham Primary School in Kent. Originally from the Netherlands, Babiche lived and worked for many years in Zimbabwe and Botswana.

In Zimbabwe she studied the economic impact of projects run by a women's group and she discusses the way in which one doesn’t always realize how bad things are in a country which, as she points out, is very different from the country where she got married, until one steps outside of it. Babiche talks about her experience of living in houses surrounded by barbed wire and of friends being attacked.

Born in the Hague, Babiche talks about experiences which have made her and her family stronger and about the ways in which we are inclined to look back through the past with a rose coloured lens but in which there were adversities we had to overcome. She talks about her experience of Christmas during the pandemic and how boundaries were woolly during lockdown.

She remembers from childhood driving to Spain or Italy and listening to Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison on a loop and enjoying the sounds of Radio Caroline.

In those days there was information to which we did not have access, which is all very different from today, and we learn that Babiche brought all her records back with her from Zimbabwe to Botswana but that they didn’t make the journey to the UK.

We find out how Babiche ended up accidentally working as a teacher. When she was young she wanted to be a ballerina, she studied Social Educational Care at undergraduate level and then did a Masters in Pedagogy. When she was in Africa she ended up working in the fashion industry as a menswear buyer where people would get worked up about, say, the colour of a drawstring and she thought there was more to life. She then embarked on a teaching degree through the University of South Africa.

Babiche talks about why it’s important for a teacher to have a broader experience than just what happens in the classroom. Teachers who are parents themselves also have a better understanding of the job. We discover whether there were any teachers who especially inspired her and we talk about why it can be easier to be a teacher than a pupil. We move on to talk about teaching in situations that one couldn’t anticipate, and how children will always tell the truth. 

We learn that Babiche used to write letters from Zimbabwe and she has a portfolio of letters sent to her grandmother.

Then, at the end of the interview, we discuss whether it is possible to find good experiences out of horrendous times, and we talk about how we used to be in touch with people in the days before social media.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Babiche Deysel and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.