My Earliest Memories

[Bearnan]

My earliest memory is of sitting up in my pram which had a sun canopy on it, the pram was in the front garden by the bay window. My dad was bending down talking to me. I was born after the war but dad was still in the army and didn't see me until I was six months old. I still have my lovely old dad who is 96.

[Viktoria]

What lovely stories and aren’t we lucky to have the facility of memory,
even some sad ones because we can compare.
I have just seen my post again and it says “being pushed around the village,well hamlet really in a silver across pushchair”——I am fed up with
predictive  text,what I put in was SilverCross pushchair,!
I do have vague memories of before the move to Shropshire but I can’tget
them organised,a local lady sitting by our fire in the big kitchen having a fag,
Mum and a Dad very busy in the shop.Probably Christmas time but not the 1940  one because we left before that and to remember it from age two and half is most unlikely.
I remember the odd pattern like red lace on the lady’s legs,she obviously sat by the fire quite a bit!My sister and I were playing under the table and an accident occurred,Mum came in from the shop to see what was happening.
We were never trusted to that lady again.
Some years later she died, leaving four little girls the eldest of whom used to get my outgrown clothes(they had been my sister’s first of all).
My mother threatened me with almost everything should I ever say anything to other girls about her having my cast offs.I would not have done anyway but if I had done—-whew hanging ,drawing and quartering would have paled into insignificance .(Mind you Mum was sometimes all talk but  I was not prepared to risk it).
Many years later when I was at Training college I used the oldest girl’s baby for a child study,I remember bathing the baby
and the Mum,at her Granny’s insistence,used Borax to clean the cradle cap from the baby’s scalp.They were appalled at  college!
Well memory lane must be abandoned as housework calls,but no grate to blacklead,no brass taps to polish,no steps to step stone nor Lino to polish either, what is left?
Whatever it is I ‘ll get on with it .
                  Viktoria.

[jbml]

I have a number of memories from the house in Loughton where I was born, and where we lived until I was 4. I am entirely satisfied that these are genuine memories and not constructed around family anecdotes or old photographs. I revisited the house a year ago, when I turned 50 (the new owners were delighted to welcome me) and have been able to add some context to a few of my recollections.

My earliest coherent memory to which it is possible to put a date is of watching the Apollo 11 launch. I was told it was a very significant event. The launch itself was quite exciting, but then they kept showing the tail flames getting smaller and smaller as the rocket disappeared off into the distance, and I found this very boring indeed. I was born in September 1967, so I wasn't quite 2.

I remember playing with my brother and Darren, the boy who lived next door, in the front bedroom which my brother and I shared. We were playing with Matchbox "Models of Yesteryear" toy cars, and Darren said that one of them vanished. I didn't know the meaning of the word and asked him, and he explained that it meant the same as "disappeared". I wondered what was the point of having two very different words with the same meaning.

I remember sitting in the kitchen at the table with the yellow formica top with a pins-and-needles pattern on it where we always had our breakfast. I had buttered a slice of toast and put some Marmite on it. My father took the Marmite jar and went to put his knife in it, but when he saw inside he bellowed "Who's put butter in the Marmite???" This enquiry was wholly unnecessary since neither my mother nor my brother liked Marmite on their toast ... so I was evidently the culprit! (I had not been taught to wipe the butter off my knife ... so the real failure was obviously that of my parents ... )

I remember that we had a treehouse, although only the fact of it. I have no specific memories associated with it.

I remember when we were moving out, and everything was packed, we had a bonfire in the back garden to burn all our combustible rubbish (you were allowed to do that in those days). I remember being told that if my clothes caught fire I must roll on the ground to put the flames out. And I remember my brother and I thought the word "bonfire" was actually "bomb fire" and we discussed how the name had come about. The conclusion we reached (although I cannot remember if it was my brother's idea or mine) was that "in the old days" they hadn't had matches, so they used bombs to light their fires. (Perfectly logical deduction, given our Mondegreen ... )

I remember making coin rubbings of 10p coins with lions on the back at the "holiday club" which my mother ran for friends' and neighbours' children in the summer holidays; and the rocking horse being brought down into the front room whenever holiday club was on. (I remember also being disappointed, after we had moved away from that house and I had started school, that "holiday club" was never so fun as it had been at Loughton, because now all the activities were more overtly educational, rather than just being things that I perceived as fun!)

A very strange - but clearly genuine - memory I have is concerned with being upset and crying. I never wanted other people to know when I was upset, and so whenever possible I would run off and hide when something made me cry. But I remember one day, being in the front room in the Loughton house, and a mother and child walked past outside with the child absolutely bawling their eyes out. And I remember being impressed and thinking to myself "THAT'S the way to cry!!!" ...  but I still never managed to do that myself!

I remember when we moved from Loughton, sitting on the stairs waiting for the removal lorry to come. And I remember when it came to packing, I couldn't find my favourite toy farm animal ... a calf called "Beebee". I looked all over and couldn't find her, and I was distraught! My mother assured me that "she would turn up" ... but she never did. And although my mother bought me a replacement, it wasn't the same!

I have loads of memories, too, from when I was 4 ... which can be firmly placed in the year after we moved (in September or October 1971) but before I started school (in September 1972). I shan't run through them all. One of the most vivid, though, is of coming back from the nursery school I attended in the mornings, and my mother put the television on. But instead of the usual mid-day cartoons, there was just this boring footage of an aeroplane slowly rolling across the tarmac with a hushed and reverent commentary along the lines of "now it is approaching the terminal". I was unimpressed and asked my mother what it was. She said "A very important man has died." In retrospect, I believe that this memory must relate to the repatriation of the body of the Duke of Windsor.

[Viktoria]

The Duke  of Windsor died May 28th 1972.Twenty years after his brother who took his place,that tells you something.
I would not personally call him important except in a negative way given his leanings towards  Facism.
He was a dangerous man and I think Wallis Simpson did this country a great
favour.George Vl was the better man and Queen Elizabeth brought some
normality into a very odd style of living having had a happy normal family life herself.
To get back on topic ,I can remember feeling that as we had Mr.Churchill and King George Vl we could not possibly lose the war  this
was very comforting to s little child away from home and family and besides
God was English (wasn’t he—-He?)
I remember George Vl ‘s funeral and how shops,and houses were draped in a deep purple,sometimes just crepe paper but so much genuine respect was shown.
To hear him get through his Christmas Day speech with its pauses and the struggle you could imagine he was having was very touching.
I was born in Coronation year,May 1937,but I am not claiming to remember that!
Viktoria.

[jbml]

Hmmmmm.

I think that, whatever his personal qualities, a former King of England deserves to be described as "important". Besides which ... how else would you describe his unprecedented constitutional position to a four year old??

[BillyF]

My mother used to talk about his ( Edward VIII ) abdication and marriage to Wallis Simpson in hushed tones, almost as if " she " was ashamed of it. But it was an important time as things would have been very different if he had reigned over us.

[iluleah]

The Duke  of Windsor died May 28th 1972.Twenty years after his brother who took his place,that tells you something.
I would not personally call him important except in a negative way given his leanings towards  Facism.
He was a dangerous man and I think Wallis Simpson did this country a great favour. George Vl was the better man and Queen Elizabeth brought some normality into a very odd style of living having had a happy normal family life herself.
Viktoria.

I would agree with you and think not only would I have been born into a very different country many years after those events but I think I may have been born into a republican country as the people would have lost faith in a Monarchy of a person who served himself and not its citizens.

[Daonnachd]

The Duke  of Windsor died May 28th 1972.Twenty years after his brother who took his place,that tells you something.
I would not personally call him important except in a negative way given his leanings towards  Facism.
He was a dangerous man and I think Wallis Simpson did this country a great favour. George Vl was the better man and Queen Elizabeth brought some normality into a very odd style of living having had a happy normal family life herself.
Viktoria.

I would agree with you, and think not only would I have been born into a very different country many years after those events but I think I may have been born into a republican country as the people would have lost faith in a Monarchy of a person who served himself and not its citizens.

You could be right iluleah; but not only would our lives be very different, what is now the Commonwealth would not be what it is, and I strongly suspect, nor would Europe! I wonder too, how special our 'special relationship' with the US would be? Perhaps that would depend on whether he was 'allowed' to marry Wallis Simpson or not once he was crowned?

I guess that does make him pretty important!
 

[andrewalston]

My earliest memories are from when I was about two. I remember wondering why I was being forced to sit in the pushchair when I could actually WALK.

However I don't remember the Silver Cross pram, which I'm informed was in pristine condition when my brother had finished with it, but I made into a wreck. I was the one who unscrewed those nice shiny chromed nuts while I was still in it. I've always liked mechanical things.

I could read and do arithmetic before I started school. I had been told that school was where you went to learn things, so I was horrified that all they did in reception class was play. After insisting on demonstrating my talents, I was moved up two classes in week 2.

I'll always remember the realisation that after dealing with sums with Tens and Units, and moving on to Hundreds, Tens and Units, that it did not matter how huge the numbers were, the rules still worked! I could do sums with any number of digits! I was four.