Your earliest memory

My earliest memory is the party held to celebrate VE Day. My Mum said I couldn’t possibly remember as I was only 15 months old. But I can see the long tables and my cousin sitting opposite me wearing a white dress with red and blue buttons and a jelly shimmering on the table. Unfortunately there are no photos to confirm my memory. Then when I was about two and a half my Dad came home from the navy and I was bought down to see this strange man sitting in ‘my’ armchair. A few days later he was still there so I thought it looks like he’s staying here so I better be nice to him and offered to help him in the garden!

About 3yrs old, living in a bedsit and the memory of someone banging on the door trying to get in and a very frightened mum shoving furniture against the door. Then going to the shared bathroom and ignoring mum's strict instruction to not look down the toilet. I still have a vivid memory off seeing the dead drowned kittens in the toilet pan.

Pably15 - I also remember wearing those pants with elastic under the feet. They were called trews and no idea why

I remember seeing my grandads hands on the hsndle of my pram, he was a smoker and his fingers were very stained. He regularly took me for walks, he died just after my 2nd birthday but even now I can recall his voice and his tobacco smell, and I know he loved me.

It’s interesting that so many people here have memories going back to age two. I’ve read others where it’s claimed that first memories are no earlier than five or six and some authors have said they remember nothing from their childhood.
I know two people who lost a parent when very young and remember nothing before that, the trauma obliterating all their previous life.

3 I believe and I got a badge from a clown at the circus. I remember telling my aunty how he came over to me and gave me a badge.

I remember walking my twin dolls in a Silver Cross pram. The most clear memory is of dad running away with me when mum asked for a divorce. It was traumatic. I was 5.

I must have been 23 months old when we moved to Hull for Dad's job, as my Sister was born when I was 13 months old and she was still a baby maybe 9/10 months?

It's an image of being in the bedroom upstairs the day we move in.

My sister was put down to sleep in a drawer. It was a dull dusty rather grey room.

Thats it: like an old black and white photo, the drawer bed on the floor, with those knitted lacy blankets, Mum and Dad in the room doing unpacking and cleaning our room first for hygiene... April, 1952

I distinctly remember being on my mum's knee and her singing to me to get me to sleep. A song that went 'Over the sea there are little brown children.......'
One of the lines 'Quickly send messages over the water telling the children that God is near' I found out later my mum was a Sunday School teacher when young sister she must have heard the sing there.

Sorry ----'so' not ' sister'

As a child I remember our church used to hold fund raising events for
Overseas Missions, Sweetpeasue.
We children were dressed as children from an overseas country and we sang Over the sea there are little brown children. For some reason the song came to mind recently.
Not a song that would be considered appropriate these days is it? But at the time, early 1950's 'the church ' meant well.

I don't know how old I was, but I was in my pram. I can clearly remember the sound of rain on the hood of the pram. I could see my mother pushing the pram and it was just going dark. Behind her I could see the outline of a huge gas holder. It was recalling this last sight (the gas holder) that when I was older told me that we must have been going home after visiting my grandmother.

I remember crying each time when my mum left me in hospital.
Visiting hours were so strict in those days and her visits were also limited by the buses for the 90 minutes each way journey.
I remember the nurses were kind, but crying was discouraged, so no cuddles.

I only know I was about 2 because that’s when I was in hospital.

I can remember being pushed in a pram downhill from the house we lived in at the time. Both my mother and father were there with the pram. I wasn't in a pushchair so was probably under a year old

We went on holiday when I was roughly 18 months old, sharing a little seaside flat with some family friends. I'm sure I have a faint memory of that, of noticing how 'different'' the light seemed as we got close to the coast, and of the strange flat roofs that so many of the buildings had.

When I was maybe eight, I was shown a photo taken on that holiday, where I am sitting on my mum's knee in a little open wooden car on a wooden track.
I don't pretend to remember the car - and why would I, as I was in the car looking ahead, not vice versa like the person who took the photo - but the sight of that wooden track immediately stirred some very strong emotions in the pit of my stomach (which is where I have come to realize that I feel a reaction to a lot of memories) and I am certain that it was a genuine memory of that track.

None of the other photos meant anything to me - I don't remember the donkey ride or the paddling - just that track ... .

I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of my memories are as much about smells and sounds as they are about images. When I remember my first infant school (which I hated), I smell the warm milk, the chalk, and the sickening smell of the dinners that arrived ready-cooked in large metal containers, and the sound of the scraping of spoons on that metal.

Oldnproud

We went on holiday when I was roughly 18 months old, sharing a little seaside flat with some family friends. I'm sure I have a faint memory of that, of noticing how 'different'' the light seemed as we got close to the coast, and of the strange flat roofs that so many of the buildings had.

When I was maybe eight, I was shown a photo taken on that holiday, where I am sitting on my mum's knee in a little open wooden car on a wooden track.
I don't pretend to remember the car - and why would I, as I was in the car looking ahead, not vice versa like the person who took the photo - but the sight of that wooden track immediately stirred some very strong emotions in the pit of my stomach (which is where I have come to realize that I feel a reaction to a lot of memories) and I am certain that it was a genuine memory of that track.

None of the other photos meant anything to me - I don't remember the donkey ride or the paddling - just that track ... .

I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of my memories are as much about smells and sounds as they are about images. When I remember my first infant school (which I hated), I smell the warm milk, the chalk, and the sickening smell of the dinners that arrived ready-cooked in large metal containers, and the sound of the scraping of spoons on that metal.

I have a similar sensual memory. To this day honeycomb patterns (sort of like butchers tripe)repel me. I remember regaining consciousness sitting on the dining room table with the doctor near me ,and seeing a honeycomb pattern on my chest. I suppose I was in shock as shortly earlier had been kicked unconscious by a pony.

My earliest memory is being in the back of a removals van with my grandmother as we were moving out of central London to Surrey. She was hammering at the front to tell the men the furniture was moving around dangerously in the back of the van. I was 2 and a half.