Throughout the play, Jimmy speaks disparagingly of Alison’s parents, characterizing his father, Colonel Redfern, as a dusty relic of the past Edwardian era. When Alison mentions this to her father, he acknowledges that he does feel a great nostalgia for the past, using imagery and a simile to describe his yearning for the period of his life when he served as a British colonial officer in India: 

When I think of it now, it seems like a dream. If only it could have gone on for ever. Those long, cool evenings up in the hills, everything purple and golden. Your mother and I were so happy then. It seemed as though we had everything we could ever want. I think the last day the sun shone was when that dirty little train steamed out of that crowded, suffocating Indian station, and the battalion band playing for all it was worth. I knew in my heart it was all over then. Everything.

He describes his memory of the past, using a simile to compare it to a "dream" that he wishes he could return to. Using lush imagery, he notes the “long cool evening up in the hills” where the sky was “purple and golden.” For Colonel Redfern, the British Raj—or the colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent by Britain—was a golden and happy time. Echoing a popular and patriotic British expression, "the sun never sets on the British Empire," he recalls the “last day the sun shone” before India gained independence, describing a “crowded, suffocating Indian station” and the loud music of a battalion band. The Colonel’s language here reflects his nostalgia for Britain’s imperial past and his disillusionment with its postwar realities.