What is your earliest memory?

I remember playing in the snow in the garden, it must have been December 1947/January 1948. I had on a pale blue siren suit with swan's down round the hood, I would have been about 19 months old. My Dad made a snowman that looked like a goblin and was quite scary.
When I was grown up I asked where the idea came from, he said the snowman was modelled on a Cornish pixie he had bought as a souvenir.

Bombs, explosions, sirens. I was 2 when WW2 started.

I have lots of vague snapshots stored away. One is just a pair of hands. I used to wonder if it was the midwife's hands from my birth but now I think they were my mother's hands so might have been from when she was feeding me or changing me.

I have many recollections from my earliest childhood up to when we moved away from London when I was 3 and a half. I had a toy trumpet of blue and silver plastic which I loved. It must have made an awful racket. Bits kept breaking off it but the noisy bit survived for a long time. I remember standing on the gate post trumpeting away.

I also remember going to Mrs Rice next door for tea. She took me on her lap because my DM was carrying my baby sister. I had just learned to do up buttons and quietly undid all the buttons on her blouse while she was talking to Mummy. This caused quite a fuss although I remember she had loads of layers underneath (vest and petticoat probably, as would have been usual then)

One memory when I was a toddler and before my brother was born, of mum sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. She had a pony tail. Another memory when I was 4 1/2, going into mum and dad’s bedroom and seeing a pile of snow in the carpet beneath the window. It was January 1958 and I was told I had a beautiful new baby sister.

Lying in bed listening to the rattling night trams going from the coal mine to the tip, don’t know age because it was every night .

Standing in amongst the red currant bushes which were way over my head, picking the red berries and eating them, whilst grandad picked them for a raspberry and red currant tart - yum - had with home made cream.

Our cat had a litter of kittens and although my mum had made her a bed out of a box with blankets in the kitchen she carried them one by one upstairs and put them under my cot,obviously feeling it was quieter and more secure there. Mum moved them back to the box but our cat was having none of it and I remember standing in my cot seeing her creeping in my room with a kitten in her mouth.

I remember being bathed and coming downstairs in my dressing gown whilst The Archers was being broadcast on the wireless. There were vegetable characters embroidered on the dressing gown, about which my lovely Dad made up stories. I must have been about three.

Aged two, I was in hospital for the repair of an umbilical hernia. No visitors were allowed but there were big windows through which I gazed for hours. Something I still do for much of the time nowadays.......!

I was 23 months old, ready to go out in my coat and shoes (Startright, tan) when I fell downstairs and hit my forehead on the red tiled hall floor. Mum panicked at the egg on my head and scooped me up and ran across to my aunt’s parents across the road.

Hiding under the kitchen table as our house was packed full of neighbours watching the Coronation on our tiny TV.
They were so noisy and excited. Everyone had brought a dining chair and there was no space to move. I was scared.

My father was killed 6 months before I was born, my earliest memory is being a bridesmaid when my mother married again, I was 3years and 4 months. I can remember the photos being taken, and later at the reception in the church hall, playing chase with the other younger bridesmaid, Elaine Booth.

I was about 3 and a half and was admitted into hospital in Birmingham with suspected polio, rife at the time. My sister was also admitted with appendicitis. My poor mum coped well as our dad was away on business, but he returned quickly.

I was kept from my family for 10 days and no one told me why. When my dad collected me as I had fortunately not got the illness, I clung to him and developed a bad stammer. I had a speech impediment for about 6 or 7 years from the shock of it all. I had speech training and subsequently did not developed a Brummie accent. Later in life I became a public speaker and teacher.

I definitely remember being in an isolation hospital with scarlet fever in 1945. Looking at mum and dad through glass doors because they weren't allowed onto the ward. I couldn't bring books and toys home. I was 5.

Redhead56

May walk for you ?

Many thanks Redhead.

I have two early memories but I'm not sure which came first. One is of playing with my imaginary friend, Pixie. He went away on holiday and I helped him pack his case. He never did come back.
The second is of the night my Mum went into hospital to give birth to my sister. I was taken to the home of an old lady friend of my parents, who I called Auntie Grace. She had a chair with wooden arms; the back went down flat to make a bed and I slept there overnight. I would have been nearly 3 years old.

May walk for you ?

Age two crawling under my GPs large bed to retrieve a clockwork crocodile toy.

First vivid memory was at 4 and a half years of age when receiving a whack across the back with a big stick from one of the so called Sisters -of -Mercy when washing the dormitory floor.
I had missed a bit with trying to see out of a lazy eye. I had a patch over the good one.
SO many beatings and being thrown in a tiny cupboard for hours for no reason at all.
All this happened way back in the 1930s.
I was finally re-united with my family when I was around 6 and a half in 1937.
Full story in the book I wrote about the first twenty years of my life.

And at the same age, not being allowed down the garden path with the rest of the family to look at dad's new car, because it was snowing and I refused to wear my woolly scarf. It was brown and I hated it.

2 or 3 years old and I was pretending to be asleep, being carried along the street by my lovely dad. My big sister was getting really cross and telling him that I was only pretending. He knew.

The same lovely big sis told me recently that at that time I was absolutely terrified of a couple of noisy peacocks that lived on the street and used to perch on my bedroom windowsill. I don't remember that at all!

1st birthday, I was in the bath, and a GM turned up with a big teddy for me.
I still have him. Half his face was chewed off by our dog when she was a pup at least 20 years ago, but a Teddy Hospital fixed him beautifully.

Next, don’t know how old but obviously still very small, trying to get behind our big old ‘wireless’ to see the little people who were talking inside. (I dare say it was Mrs Dale’s Diary.). Such a disappointment - just wires and little light bulbs!
No wonder I remember it.

I was about 2 being wheeled in my pram by my Dad through Queens Park in Glasgow. I remember people sitting on the grass and a band playing. Be around 1953.

Being on a plane when I was 3. We were off on holiday to Portugal.

We dropped rapidly due to turbulence.

I remember the gasps and crying of people

But we lived to tell the tale!

My brother and sister's christening. They were twins. I remember being given sweets called Satin Cushions to keep me quiet. I must have been about 2 at the time.

Aged about three sitting in my our living room with a brother and a few sisters being told we had measles. We were all covered in red spots and my mum was tearing her hair out because we were crying all at once.