Misty asks what my earliest memory is.
Simple!
Or is it?
I think I was in my teens when I realised that most of my clearest early memories are ones captured by photographs, typically of holidays, days out and family gatherings. I suspect that these photos are a key to how memory works - by looking again and again at the photos, they reinforce a memory which, due to the superficial nature, would otherwise be eroded. No doubt neurologists, psychiatrists and maybe even psychologists would be able to talk at length about hard wiring.
Most of the rest of my memories are of trivial events, usually that took place in very familiar surroundings. I have no memories of my grandmother, who died when I was two, but I do remember going round to my Grandad's, before he moved on remarriage when I was four. I recall asking "Any Mm-mms?" which was the code my parents used for sweets, not imagining, of course, I would associate it with sweets. And, of course, Grandad was a little bit more forthcoming with sweets than the parents were.
I have some haphazard early memories - being in the bath with my rubber tortoise; one Christmas it was very snowy on the way to Church so my sister was put into my pram - I must have been very young, because she's three-and-a-half years older than me. I remember the road where we lived being resurfaced. This might have been in the Sixties, and I don't think it's been done since. ButI have loved the smell of asphalt ever since. I remember when the gas fire was fitted in the sitting room (although bizarrely, I don't actually remember there being a coal fire there); this sticks in my mind because one of the fitters was black, and I had never seen a black person before, certainly not close to, so I wanted to touch his hand, and I remember him being very patient and charming.
I remember a bird in my bedroom which really scared me, so I spent the night in my parents bed. I've never really liked birds indoors since.
I suspect that these all occurred before the age of four - I have much clearer memories from then on. I do distinctly remember cutting the hair on my sister's dolls (okay, I'll admit - but she does have a bit of a chip on her shoulder about it); that must have been after I was four because it was inspired by a doll I got for my fourth birthday whose hair is adjustable by a belly button and a screw in her back. I think the crayoned ticks in the Ladybird books just appeared as if by magic...
I don't recall out of the backdoor onto the concrete step but I do have the scar on my chin to prove it.
I was undoubtedly a very sweet, very loveable toddler...
