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Spending christmas days with my famiky and nana joiningnus for dinner, was a great day and loved having her there with us to celebrate it, especially the year i got a walkman and felt on top of the world that year until i broke it.

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as a child our whole family would go to Camber Sands one Sunday in the year. There would be about 25 to 30 of us, mum, dad, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents etc. We would set up a long line of windbreaks and picnic blankets, play rounders, fly kites, paddle, ride the donkeys and have ice creams. I have such happy memories of those times!

Friday night when dad came home from work. He worked very hard in a factory and often came home late, tired and bad tempered. But on Fridays, after getting his pay packet, he always came home with a bar of Caramac chocolate (horribly sweet and sickly but delicious), a Bunty for me and an Eagle for my brother. Yes, he did love us really!

The great excitement I used to feel, aged about five, when my much older brother came home from University. He made life so much fun. I couldn't sleep or eat for the week before he arrived.

Collecting fresh warm hens eggs from their little straw beds in the henhouse, when I visited a neighbour...I was probably about four years old...and found this so exciting! Pushing my hand gently into the straw, stretching my fingers and then finding the lovely warm little eggs made me feel so happy!

My favourite memory from my child hood was lying in bed on christmas eve listening for father christmas sleigh bells. Christmas was such a magical time for me when i was a child because my dad was home he worked away a lot but always managed to be home for christmas.

playing out in the woods

Living on RAF camps as a child during the sixties gave opportunities for illicit playing in old air raid shelters and climbing grass covered hangars; being pulled on my roller skates by my sister on her bike along the bumpy cement runway; walking to the village school every day along a country lane and through the village and stopping off at the blacksmith's shop to watch him work.

We were watching the coronation on a tiny television and my dad brought my mother and baby sister home from Hospital. My sister only weighed 5lbs 4 oz and I can remember her lying on an armchair. She was thinly, like a doll. My mother had obviously explained to me about breast feeding because I went into the bedroom to watch and came running out shouting ‘it’s working,’ I’ve never lived it down.

My favourite childhood memory is a bit fuzzy as I was so young, but it was a very sunny day on the beach, I was riding a donkey, I can still remember the smell of the donkey and the leather from the reins, and I was also admiring my lovely red patent sandals.

Staying at my grandma’s house and eating her enormous dinner-plate sized Yorkshire puddings!

So many to choose... happy memories. Christmas and summers with my grandparents. My grandad taught me to play many of the classic board games and we played endlessly over the years. I remember i was very proud when I finally beat my grandad.

Getting the 10pm Saturday night train at Victoria Station in Manchester to catch the Belfast ferry from Holyhead. My dad having his last pint in the bar at the station and me sitting outside the door with my lemonade and crisps, so he could see me. The walk along the dockside up to the ferry with other families, pushing prams and carrying suitcases. The walk up the wooden gangplank onto a giant ship. I was heading off for the school holidays to stay with my Nannie. It's all so different now.

My most treasured memory is sitting on my Dad's knee as we played 'Horsey, horsey' or 'This little piggy'.
I always felt so loved and so safe.

picking blackberries with my Nan, then watching her make blackberry jelly jam

Sitting in the street bursting tar bubbles with the other kids. It was so hot then,

My grandfather was one of eight siblings, the eldest boy child. On Sundays he and I would go off dressed in our best to visit one or another of his brothers and sisters. Sometimes we walked but most times we went by bus. That was when I was growing up in the early 1950s. To this day, I still have lunch with the granddaughter of one of his sisters and a daughter (now aged 91) of another sister. I often feel those visits were like the glue that held the family together over all the years. Wonderful memories!

I remember being so happy when I done my first aerial/cartwheel with no hands. It was a great feeling because I had tried over and over before achieving it. Learning anyway gymnastic skill was always fantastic. I spent every spare minute tumbling about. My parents said I was upside down more than right way up!!

Church occasionally with Nana and Grandad from 4 yrs old. Vicar signed my autograph book with a lovely saying when he left which was something like "if I can do one thing before I go, let me do it, as I may not pass this way again".

summer holidays playing on the beach

Going swimming in the River Test on long summer afternoons. Everyone, well my neighbours, used to go there. Its now not possible, regulations etc.

Going to the beach in Spain for 2 week holidays in the summer. The beach was wonderful, I made lots of friends, went to parties by the pool and the days were warm and very long.

Staying at my gran's bed and breakfast at the seaside and spending sunny days on the beach making sandcastles with little flags on top.

There used to be an old lady who lived a few doors down from us and she always used to give us sweets. She invited us into her house and there was a special cupboard with the sweets in that smelt like TCP. The smell of TCP still brings back memories of that sweet cupboard and Miss Barlow.

Day trips with my mum, aunty,uncle and cousin to Ferryside where we would park in a field and brew tea on a primus stove and eat cold chicken and bread and butter. Then we would go to the beach and pick cockles which you could feel under your feet in the sand or swimming in the river at Brecon on a hot Summer afternoon