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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: plimmerian on Tuesday 31 July 18 11:24 BST (UK)
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I'm waiting for my first assessment tomorrow and was prompted in a previous screening, to think back to childhood. Memories came flooding back, here our some early snippets.
My memories seem to begin at Bentley Street, Clock Face, St Helens, with neighbours Madge and Austin. I have a clear memory in my nappy, standing up in my cot and seeing Mum talking to Madge over the fence. I was attempting to get my Mum's attention.
Then my memories jump to when we lived in Hewitt Avenue, Eccleston, St Helens. I remember riding my first bike (tricycle) there. I recall the lady across the road called Joan, she had a hush puppy dog called Santa. I remember her mother, an old lady but can't remember her name - Mrs ?
There are memories of another lady who would walk a Dalmatian dog past our house every day and would often stop to chat if we were out in the garden.
I have memories of going to nursery near there too, a huge old Victorian building. The teacher played guitar and we would go up a steep, narrow staircase to a very dark television room to watch "Play School". I seem to remember going past a blacksmiths near our home and I recall seeing a shire horse being shoe-ed on a hot summer's day for some reason.
There is a memory of going to the town centre of St Helens with my father, as he wanted to go to Argos. I remember feeling bored and was distracted. A man walked towards the door of the store, to leave the building and shopping mall. I had mistaken him for my father, followed him out and ended up on the street outside alone. Terrified I got upset in the panic but thankfully a lovely family stopped to find out who I was and what had happened. It must have only been minutes but my father came running out of the mall looking for me. I'm sure I got told off for it and my father would have got scolded by my Mum for not keeping hold of me!
In my memories it felt Hewitt Avenue had "soul" but when we moved away to another town, on to a new build estate and I remember having feelings of "this place has no soul". I do remember our first neighbours moving in though, on the same day. Their daughter was Becky and their dog was Sam, who was mad as a box of frogs!
This move meant there was no nursery for me to attend, so my Mum had made the infant school take me in earlier than I should have been. So when new school started and my classmates moved up a year, they were all making a fuss that I hadn't moved up with them, not realising I was actually in the correct year I was suppose to be in.
Thank you for letting me share.
:)
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My first definite memory is being met on Shrewsbury Station by my father’s cousin.Not sure of the date but definitely immediately after the Christmas 1940 blitz on our area of Manchester ,Dec 23rd and 24th .
Don’t remember Christmas at all,presents etc.
I then remember arriving at my father’s cousin’s house.
How dark it was -just paraffin lamps and candles but a nice fire in the bungalow range.
How long my parents stayed I do not know but I have no recollection of seeing them for ages.I had not met Dad’s cousin or his wife .
My sister was to live with Dad’s auntie in the next cottage,so not far apart but not together.She had made many visits being three years older than me,
lots of photos etc.
And so after a little while and more upheavals(Dad’s cousins at long last were having a baby) I went to live with people who were not related and I can remember being pushed in a navy blue a Silver across pushchair around the village ,well hamlet really,and being taken in by the wonderful people with whom I was to spend the rest of the war and many many holidays later.
I was not I’ll treated by my relatives but the care I had from the people who took me in was wonderful.I might very well have been a handful ,four homes by the time I was four probably was not a good thing but I was so happy and had an amazing childhood.Just the right amount of “careful neglect”,
playing free and finding out for myself.
I am still in contact with the daughter of those people who was like a third mother to me being nine years older.
The war was of course absolutely horrible but for me it was a most happy time.Sadly I don’t think Mum and I re connected as well as she and my sister did ,but my sister never settled and there were tears and tantrums every time Mum had to go back to Manchester whereas I just watched wondering what she was fussing about.
She however was not with a nice family where there was a younger child,a spoilt brat called Phyllis,to this day I find it impossible to like anyone named Phyllis :(
Was I damaged, I don’t think so really.
But the memories I have of that time are amazing.I ought to write them down.
I phoned the daughter just the other day which I do regularly.
She is 90 now and not in good health,I must make a visit,I am dreading that
phone call.
Oh I am off down memory lane again.But it is a lovely place to be.
Viktoria.
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One of my earliest memories (aged +/- 3) was seeing a huge brown snake in a hedge during a leisurely walk with my parents (on the reins :)). They told me not me be silly and walked on (and dragged me with them). 60 years on, my 'snake sighting' does seem very unlikely. At the time I couldn't understand why they couldn't see it too :)
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I had a recurring memory of being in a bed with high bars, (This would have been a cot) the walls were green and there was a yellow curtain at the side of the bed. There was a loud ticking clock above the door and people passing would look at me through the window in the door. People who came in and out of the room always wore masks. I do remember my Mother coming and she too wore a mask. When I recalled this memory to my a Mother, she told me I was in the hospital with suspected Diptheria which turned out to be double pneaumonia and I they also found that I had a heart murmur. I was 18 months old.
When I was about four or five years old, I saw a girl in the street with a doll and pram that she had got for her birthday and she was showing it off, I recognised it as it had a black doll dressed in knitted clothes made by my mum. I told her that the doll and pram was mine and she wouldn't let go of it, I gave her a shove and took my doll and pram home. Soon after there was a knock on the door and the girl's Mother told my mother what I had done. I learned that my Mother had passed it on as I didn't play with it anymore. I can still remember being upset and saying "but it was mine". When my own children outgrew their toys, I always asked if they had finished with them before passing them on.
Carol
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Several strong memories of carrying a little white toy dog tucked under my arm which seemed to go everywhere with me, I know it disappeared before I went to school.
Hiding under the wooden steps while the children played in the playground during my first week in full time school as I was frightened and didn't know anyone and when the teacher found me, scolded me,then being forced to sleep with a prickly blanket, on returning to the class room which had all camp beds put in it for all the children and not wanting to. Each child was given a toothbrush and rough towel, both looked second hand and I didn't want to use it, so the teacher stood over me until I did.
I was just 3 yrs old when I went to full time school.
I had to stand on an upside down plant pot to unlock the door after school and was told I could play in the back garden or in the house, not open the door and not go out the front, so I 'read' stories to the dog and cats waiting for my parents to come home from work. I felt very lonely and isolated, my friend was the dog.
Then the dreaded 'list' on the mantle a long list of jobs to do, 'wash up', 'dry', 'put away', 'piano practice', 'feed the rabbits'... the list went on forever... I would not look at the mantle for ages and prayed it wasn't there but it always was.
Being 'palmed' off during school holidays or having to sit in the back of the shop and be quiet ( which also happened every weekend) One summer I went to stay with my mum's cousin in Wales, one was spent with my grandparents in Nottinghamshire and that was all before I was 6yrs old.
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You might like to read the latest report on earliest memories
https://www.sciencealert.com/earliest-memory-may-be-fictional-40-percent-of-people
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Well, these early memories of mine are certainly not fictional! ;D ;D ;D ;D
1. When I was a wee girl, my Dad would dance around the lounge with me standing on his feet. Lovely song (on YouTube)
2. I know that my Dad would always sing the same song to me when sitting on his knee every night and before putting me to bed!
(The song was "Daddy's Little Girl"! It's on YOUTUBE, sung by Michael Buble, and I cry when I watch it, (which I do very often when I think about my lovely Dad"
https://youtu.be/aZcRH2V_Cfs
Another song that brings back happy but tearful memories is also on YouTube - Dance with my Daddy Again!
https://youtu.be/vqs7jvYkUR0
(A combination of both happy and sad tears rolling down my face as I typed this) 😥😥😂😂🌹🌹😟😰
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I remember being in my cot and I couldn't move very much, I felt very hot and had a bad taste in my mouth. I also remember a man I didn't know leaning right over me and saying something I didn't understand to my Mum. Years later I told my mum about it, and was told I had rheumatic fever when I was about 18 months, I always supposed the man was our GP.
From 3 - 5 I remember going for walks in the park with my Dad and our dog. My Dad never really knew what to do with a daughter, and this was the only thing I really remember us doing together. Having said that, he used to get me to help pick the runner beans, because I was small enough to get between the canes to the ones he couldn't reach.
I was an only child, and our dog was my playmate. When I think of how I pulled him around! he must have been the most patient dog in the world, I don't ever remember him barking at me. I was 5 when he died - my first bereavement I suppose.
Every year I was sent to my grandmother's during the summer holidays from school until my Nan got ill - when I was 8. I loved it. She lived in a village in Suffolk, whereas I lived in a built-up town in Greater London. I loved the countryside. A cousin lived a few doors away so I spent the weeks with her and her village friends playing in the fields behind the houses, and making castles out of the bales of hay (not possible, or allowed now!).
One night every year they burned the stubble, and I loved to watch it from the house. They also had a dog, my own dog's litter sister, she was just as patient with me!
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We also had a dog - a lovely white spaniel with a black patch around one eye! Naturally, he was called Patch! Happy little fella, but if we sang ("I'm a Lonely Little Petunia In An Onion Patch" he would stand up on his hind legs and howl along with us!! - Another Happy Memory! 😍😍
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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??
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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.
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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.
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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! :)
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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.
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My earliest memory is of getting out of bed in the dark, wondering what was going on. I left the bedroom and was intercepted on the landing by my aunty who returned me to bed, telling me there was nothing to worry about. I discussed this with my mum a few years ago, describing the layout of the doors, furniture etc. She is sure it must have been the night my sister was born, making me 18 months old.
The other memory I have from this period is having a very itchy & painful bottom! This had been caused by ants invading my nappy as I sat outside on the old setts.
The next clear memory is a little later, having moved from Leighton Buzzard to Guisborough (N Yorks) I was sitting on my tricycle in the large farmhouse kitchen while my father read the newspaper before work. I read out the word 'might' from the headline & promptly fell off the scooter. I have lots of memories from that farmhouse which was rented for only a few years.
I got into lots of trouble for removing some baby bluetits from their nest & creating a new one in a cardboard box in the scullery. We kept a crow with a broken wing in the loft until the wing had healed sufficiently for it to fly (my dad was a vet so we knew what we were doing) I also recall the panic when my younger brother went missing one day, the frantic search & unvoiced thought that he might have got into the drained pond which was an unknown depth of liquid mud. He was eventually found curled up, asleep under the quilt on the spare room bed in his brown anorak & red wellies. My sister had fallen in a few months earlier. I have a vivid visual memory of her dress spread out around her as she very slowly sank, my father leaning over to pull her out and the sucking sound as her bright orange wellies were left behind. I remember being cross with my younger brother & sister because they had gone into the 'forbidden' hen house and fallen though the rotting floor gaining legs full of splinters, and being worried I might be in trouble because I was the oldest & 'in charge'
Gosh I could go on for quite a while with memories from before school but will stop there.