But the Bryans, by and large, have sunny memories of their childhood.
"I love the idea of taking something mundane or obscure and making it beautiful," he says, summing up the Hipstamatic's popularity – it manages to make every moment captured, however boring, feel like the perfect sunny memories of your childhood.
Even when Iyadede was singing about sunny memories of childhood in Africa, the glides and quavers in her voice may well have had as much to do with Erykah Badu as with the music she grew up with in Rwanda, which she called "a beautiful country that I had to leave".
Sunny's memories assume such a potent reality that the world around him — slowed and hastened, respectively, by drink and by a family of his own — sometimes seems to him a kind of solipsistic dream.
Sunny's memories assume such a potent reality that the world around him slowed and hastened, respectively, by drink and by a family of his own sometimes seems to him a kind of solipsistic dream.
The rare assembly outside Washington was in Lower Manhattan just about five blocks from where the twin towers had stood, and the warm, brightly sunny day evoked memories of the morning almost a year ago when the two hijacked planes struck the buildings and altered the city's skyline and psyche.
FINAL TAKE "Getting outside for at least 30 minutes a day when the weather is warm and sunny can improve mood, memory and promote creative thinking," Metropolitan Home writes, citing research done at the University of Michigan.
No longer does summer automatically compute as the precious, stress-free cushion reinforced by sunny movies or golden memories.
And part of the reason is that the sunniest year in living memory was also the point at which inequality in Britain reached its lowest since the second world war.
Sometimes, as a nine-year-old twice transported, the words I heard moved me in unexpected ways, like impressions of half-forgotten sunny afternoons, less than memories and therefore impossible to share.
