Michael Bywater is a writer and broadcaster, whose column ‘Lost World’ is in the ‘Independent on Sunday’ and whose book ‘Lost Worlds– What Have we Lost and Where did it Go’ is now in the book shops.

It is quite a tome with many obscure and infrequently used words. Its opening chapter titled Prolegomenon, meaning preliminary material in a book, is full of them. I read on and frequently needed to look up a word’s meaning.

This can be beneficial, however the content of his introduction was a tad too dark for this reader, page three, paragraph three, for example:

“You may deny that your life has been, as much as anything, a process of loss; but it has. From the moment you were born, a Universal Process of attrition has been waged against you, internally and externally. If Jesus wants you for a sunbeam, that far older deity, Nature, wants you for a dunghill.”

All no doubt unarguably true, and perhaps Bywater is writing from a ‘tongue in cheek position’ but after a few more pages of the same ilk I skipped at random through the remaining 250-odd pages, a method I would highly recommend for this book.

An excellent index is found to the back of the book, although many of the references would lean heavily towards a more British experience of things e.g. Fug– a good fug requires pipe smoke, B.O., a London fog, the windows tight shut, cabbage boiling on the stove and everyone in front of the coal fire, getting chilblains, and central heating just will not do.

I really got the hang of how nostalgic this book can be with the section on L.Ps. Bywater recalls the cover art, the sleeve notes on the back, and the smell. Ah yes, I find myself drifting off into memory lane. I recall that smell, and the fragile feel of the record, the careful handling to place it on the turntable, choosing the 78 or 45 speed setting, the picking up of the needle while listening and feeling for the click that began the record circling and then lowering the needle with great precision so it would not slide and cause scratches to the vinyl.

Ah yes, I found myself remembering how we smooched, clinging to one another to the rhythms of ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’ or how we roared along drunkenly to ‘all in all we’re just another brick in the wall’.

On another occasion the book opened at Bang-Bang, I got excited thinking ‘this is about Dublin’ but no, it bewailed the loss of various old british transport systems. I remembered the Dublin Bang-Bang and this was a man. He was one of Dublin’s ‘characters’, tramping the city streets waving his stick, shouting “Bang-Bang” and scaring newcomers and tourists.

More characters came to mind: the lady decked out totally in black walking the streets with a huge cross carried on her shoulder; the tall, bee-hived blond whose patch was under Nelson’s Pillar where she berated the rush-hour pedestrians, promising hell and damnation.

A friend of mine says she regrets the demise of “old fashioned manners” when people would. for instance, hold doors open for each other. Another younger woman bemoans the loss of a politeness which would ensure pregnant women and older people seats in public places such as buses and trains. A colleague regrets the disappearance of the milk bottle and my mouth still waters at the memory of the Flash Bar and Urney’s Two and Two Chocolate Bar.

Stephen Fry said of ‘Lost Worlds’: “This marvellous and valuable book transforms itself as you read from a quirky miscellany into something wiser, nobler, deeper, sadder and more remarkable.” See what you think. It is available in most Dublin book shops or may be obtained from www.amazon.com or www.shopireland.ie.