First memories

Aldom Another immediately post-war memory I have is beong terrified of planes. If onecame over I had what seemed to to me then, irrational uncontrollable urge to rush into the house and hide under the dining table.

My mother would coax me out and take me outside and tell me that the pilot in the plane was a man just like my Daddy (in India at the time) and he had alittle girl just like me and when he landed his aeroplane he would be going home to be with his little girl and her mummy. Again this fear was the fear everyone felt in our corner of South London, when the V2's, admittedly unarmed, but how was I to know?

I have a memory of being very frightened, upset and crying as a very small child, being carried then being put in a bed/cot in the evening by someone.

It was dark outside. Whoever it was [it may have been my Aunt] was telling me to look at the street light outside, that I was safe and that everything was ok.

When I was older I was thinking about this and raced upstairs , looked out of the front bedroom window where we then lived - there was no street light outside it.

This meant the memory came from the previous house where there was an alarming incident. The person who put me to bed wasn't my Mother or Grandmother as they were taken to hospital so I would have been very unsettled. That would mean the memory was from when I was 2.5 years old.

I think if events are unusual, due to trauma or a very happy event no matter how small, it makes a real deep impression on one's mind.

dayvidg

My earliest dateable memory is crossing the tram tracks
at Bispham to get to the beach. I was 22 months at the time. All other early memories are undatable.

I wonder if my children will have crossing those train tracks too! My M&D lived in Bispham and had my children to stay every summer.
Watching the news about the weather and Shap the other Day I remembered a new memory. Is that allowed? I must have been 3 and a half because my sister was a baby. We were on our way to visit Granny and Grandad at Naddlegate (aka Burnbanks) and we got stuck in the ice and snow. Some kind family gave us a bed for the night.
We got to our destination the next day.

I was two years old when I remember my artist dad putting me in a big cardboard box to play in his garret studio, which had rickety stairs. When I was three he moved studios and it was a safer environment and I was allowed to use oil paints. The paintbrush seemed like a sweeping brush as I was so small and the pinny came down my feet.

Witzend I can remember my baby twin brothers sleeping in drawers at my paternal grandma's house. That would have been 1948.

My first birthday - I was in the bath and my paternal GM arrived with a big teddy for me. I’ve still got him.

There was also a Christmas when I must have been very small, because I was put to bed at a GM’s house in a padded drawer! And there was a small doll on the Christmas tree that was for me.

I am a few months older than MOnica and my first memory is also a war time memory. Several female family members, probably my mother's sisters, sil were gathered on the porch of my aunt's bungalow.
I was being held in my mother's arms. I suppose I was just over twelve months old. It was dark. Everyone was looking at the night sky. I remember the drone of aeroplanes flying overhead. It's rare to hear that sound now, but growing up, whenever I heard the drone of air craft it sent shivers down my spine and left me feeling sad.

My first clear memories are of when I was 3-4, but I have secondhand memories of when I was under 2.

I was born in South London in 1943, where we got the full brunt of the German V1 and V2 rocket attacks and I would have seen civil defence workers in grey overalls and tin helmets, working in and around recently bombed sites.

When I was about 4 there were major earthquakes in Iran and I can remember them talking about it on the radio - and there may have been photographs of people fleeing the area in the newspapers. I was convinced that an earthquake was an oxygen cylinder shaped object in the ground and men in grey overalls and helmets had to dig down to it and do something to it before it exploded. presumably a 4 year old's memory of what she saw and heard when she was under 2.

probably my age but I remeber very little before senior school. My siblings will talk about an event from our childhhod that I have no memory of

I was in hospital at age 2.5. I remember hearing my twin crying - and crying back! Children were not allowed in the ward for visiting so my sister had to wait in the waiting room! I did not understand why we were not together. I remember tied in a blanket to my fathers chest on the motorbike. Apparently the only time this happened was to get me to hospital- ( aged 2.5) at the drs insistence- my parents ( like most people back then) did not have a car.

I was a wee baby in my pram. My mother had left me in a Butchers shop. I had no idea I’d been left until all these huge different faces kept peering at me and there was a great hullabaloo. My first knowledge of life and it greatly affected me. While I lay in the pram two arms crossed over me, I will never forget that. She finally came back but left me again later in life when I was on a roller skating rink on holiday and I didn’t know where we were staying,

Well, nobody told me about my experience. Nobody was allowed to mention my Dad when I was young as my parents had most one of the most acrimonious divorces and as soon as it was over, my Dad disappeared. 50 years later, my mother still didn't want to talk about him!.

I wonder how many of these memories are from things we ve been told or even photographs we ve seen I have a memory of someone running down the back alleyway with me When I was about 18 months old I fell UP a step and cut my chin open and had to go to have it stitched Now do I really have a memory or was i told about what happened We didn’t have a car and it s quite feasible my dad may have ran with me to the nearest hospital about 1 to 2 miles away
I have another memory of sitting under my Nans table playing with trains with a boy about my age Now no one in my family has any ideas about this and can’t think of any time or who I could have been playing with I had no brothers and no cousins that I knew
I have other thoughts but think they all come from photos I ve seen not real personal memories

I know I was not even three, I was not well and in a tin bath in the kitchen. My mother had a neighbour in for a cup of tea. As she stood me up to get me out of the bath I vomited green stuff. My mother then said to the neighbour "I would have been back at work if it hadn't been for this one". When I was three she said "you don't mind if mummy goes to work do you"? That was in 1954. As if a three year old could comprehend that! She obviously didn't want me and my childhood was miserable.

My first memories must have been when I was less than 2, but then I don't seem to remember many more until from when I was about 3 or 4.

I have an excellent memory. It’s spooky. Years ago, I was watching Upstairs Downstairs with my parents; when it was first on) and I pointed out that the actor who was the footman - Christopher Beeny - used to be in The Groves which was on telly when I was very small , before I was at school. They were amazed and a bit weirded out. I remember good and bad things in Technicolor detail . It’s a blessing AND a curse, believe me .

I remember getting a blue penny for my 2nd birthday, I think it had embroidered picture of mice on it, so I was fascinated with mice and was convinced a leave that blew across the floor was a mouse.

My first memory is the party held in the street at the end of WWII. I was 14 months old and my Mum always said “you can’t possibly remember that”. But I do, I can see my cousin, who lived opposite us, in a white dress with red,white and blue buttons. Just recently this cousin found a photo of that day and there she is in a white dress with darkish buttons. (The photo is b/w) I remember sitting in my high chair at the table watching a jelly shimmering. I also remember my Dad coming home from the Navy in 1946 when I was 2 and after a few days of ignoring him I thought it looks like he’s going to stay so I better be nice to him! Other things, the workmen coming to repair the bomb damage to our house, the lorry that emptied the rainwater drains then moved down the road and let the dirty water out again so us children could collect all our marbles that had rolled into the drain. No health and safety rules then.

My earliest memory is when I was two and my dad was giving me a bath and singing Yellow Submarine. It would have been 1967 and I think it was probably no. 1 at the time.

My second birthday my 3 older cousins all ate the sweets out of a sweet shop they had brought me
.I once described a room I remembered to my late mother and she confirmed it was the lounge of a house we left when I was just over two.

Oh, and like others, there are loads of things I can't remember but these were also times when I was dreadfully unhappy.

My very first memory is of me lying in the back of a bubble car on a tartan rug. My Mum got me out of the car and screamed, "Oh my God, she's red". Then she saw the dog and said, "Its alright, the car must have a leak and it's from the rug." I was about 30 when I said to Mum about it and she said that I couldn't possibly remember it but agreed it had happened. She was apparently on holiday with my Dad in a car that they had borrowed and she was pregnant with my sister experiencing the most terrible morning sickness. There is only 20 months between us!

My first memory I must have been around 2 years old and I remember being taken to visit my great grandparents. I remember my mum sitting me on their sideboard but not much else except that my great grandfather was still alive at that time . My great grandmother only died a week before my 18th birthday . I also remember at the age of 3 and a half my brother starting school and I screamed the place down because I couldn’t go in with him .

I remember, just 5 days before my 3rd Birthday, my Mum taking me to a neighbour who sat me down in front of the television with a drink in a glass and a couple of biscuits on a China plate. Playschool was on and there were pandas through the window. Next time I saw Mum, a few days later, she had a new baby with her.
The next memories come a year later. We were living with Nan and Grandad while Dad was posted to Borneo for a year. Grandad taught me how to chop kindling with the axe and I also learnt how to clear the fire grate out, remake it and light it, using a sheet of newspaper across the front if it didn't draw. I can't imagine today's young children doing things like that.

I remember sitting in my big pram, aged around 2. I was strapped in with a leather harness that had pictures of a pixie and two bunnies. The hood was up and the raincover was over the blankets. My father was pushing the pram, and he had arranged a line of 5 Floral Gums in front of me to keep me quiet on the way to my uncle and auntie’s house!