Back to the very beginning – memoir

Just before the blog hacking incident, I began to post some of my childhood memories after Sherri at A View From My Summerhouse suggested it. Of course they were lost, along with everything else, but I’ve managed to salvage the ones I’d already written. My intention was  to continue writing more and post one every month but I got a bit bogged down with other things in January. Anyhow, this is the first one, published back in 2014, not long before my blog was hacked.

When Sherri suggested I publish my memoirs I wondered how much I would remember, memory not being one of my strong points, but she said I’d be surprised the things that came into my head once I started. She was right. Once I began to think about it lots of little things began to surface, many of them long forgotten. For a while I resisted, thinking people wouldn’t want to read about that kind of thing but in the end I thought, ‘why not give it a try?’ So here we are…

One of my earliest memories is of picking flowers. I’m not sure how old I was but I certainly can’t have been more than about two because, any older than that, and the flower picking would have been followed by some world class telling off from Mother. This was on the little path that went round the side of the house close to where my Buddha sits these days. The flowers aren’t clear in my memory and I couldn’t tell you what they were, not even the colour, but maybe that moment was where my love of flowers was born.

The garden was Mother’s pride and joy. When I think of my childhood I always see her either gardening or ironing although I’m sure she did lots of other things. When she ironed she would tell me stories about me and my favourite doll, Bobby. Sadly, I don’t remember a single one, just the sitting quietly listening and the smell of freshly laundered clothes. She ironed everything, sheets, underwear, handkerchiefs. The love of gardening rubbed off on me but the love of ironing certainly did not.

Being, to all intent and purpose, an only child as my sister Alex got married when I was just three, much of my early childhood was quite solitary. My very early memories are snippets, sitting on the front step dangling my legs, laying on the grass watching ants, playing fairies with fallen fuchsia flowers, blowing bubbles on the back step with a bubble wand made from wood and twisted wire by Pappy. I don’t ever remember being lonely or bored. What I do remember is beauty all around me in the flowers, the shimmering colours of soap bubbles, green grass and blue sky. It seems like an idyllic time looking back.

One of my favourite toys was a brightly coloured metal spinning top. When it span it played the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle and the pictures of the cat and the fiddle and the cow jumping over the moon would blur into lines of red, green, yellow and blue. Many happy hours were spent laying on the hall floor spinning that top with coloured light streaming through the stained glass in the front door. A hinged box of coloured wooden blocks were another favourite along with several wooden jigsaw puzzles. The best thing about the puzzles was, when made up, they fit exactly into their boxes.

Many children are afraid of the dark, I wasn’t one of them. Until Alex got married I slept in a cot in my parent’s room and, much to Mother’s dismay, I had a habit of climbing out in the night. I don’t remember the act of climbing and, thinking about it now, I wonder how I did it because the sides of a cot are quite high for a child of two or so. Obviously I was far more athletic back then. What I do remember is the reason, although I was far to young to explain at the time.

The reason was the dark. Quietly I’d creep to the darkest corner of the room and stare at it. Ok, so, if you didn’t think I was odd before, you probably do now but I loved the dark. If I stared and stared I saw glowing colours and shapes. Not so long ago I had an occular migraine  and it reminded me so much of the colours I used to see in the dark as a child I wonder if that was what it was.

In despair my parents tried everything bar actually tying me down. Mother even bought me a kind of sleep suit, like a little sleeping bag with arms, thinking it would stop me. It was blue and made of blanket like material but the very first night I wore it I was was out of that cot like a shot and staring at the dark again. It must have driven her mad.

There is another snippet of memory about a cot but this was not my own and I doubt I tried to climb out of it. When I was still quite young, maybe two, I caught whooping cough. Thankfully I don’t remember the coughing at all but I ended up in hospital and I do remember crying in a white metal cot surrounded by strangers.

As Alex was seventeen years older than me she wasn’t much use as a playmate. Sometimes I was allowed to wake her up in the morning. I must have been the most irritating little sister in the history of the world because my main memory of this is bouncing on her bed shouting “wakey, wakey, rise and shine.” Her room was blue and, on the wall beside the bed, there were some little framed black and white photos of Southampton Water with seagulls flying over it. At least I think it was Southampton Water. While she dressed I loved to sit and look at them.

Under the window was a big box covered in thick quilted material. This was her hope chest, filled with sheets, blankets and all the other linen she would need when she got married. Sometimes she would lift me up and let me sit on top of it to look out of the window. There must have been a great temptation to open that window and push me out after all that bed jumping.

The best bit about sitting on the hope chest were Alex’s china dolls. They came in all sizes, some as big as a real baby and I was not allowed to touch them. When she wasn’t looking, I would tentatively reach out a hand and feel the cool china under my fingers. She was probably right to keep me away. The only china doll I was allowed to touch was my own beloved Bobby and I managed to drop him and crack his head. He was taken to the dolls hospital in Old Northam Road and mended but he was never quite the same. Even so, I loved him dearly and took him everywhere with me.

To Alex I was probably a pain of a little sister but she was my hero. Sometimes she would draw me pictures. Mostly these were ballerinas because, like any little girl, I had a bit of a fixation with ballerinas although I’d never seen a real one. Alex was good at drawing, even now I can picture those ballerinas especially their ballet shoes with ribbons laced up around long legs. I would have given anything for ballet shoes like those or just to be able to draw them. As soon as I could hold a crayon I tried and tried to draw ballerinas of my own but all I managed was wobbly stick people. This was the start of a love affair with art and drawing that would last a life time.

Alex had a pair of white stiletto shoes with very pointy toes. These were all the rage in the early 1960’s and I remember wishing I could have shoes like that. Her dresses had cinched in waists and full skirts with layers of rustling petticoats. She also back combed her hair and wore lots of hairspray that came in a squeezy plastic bottle along with mascara in a little oblong box and had to be spit on. On special occasions she had tiny hair clips with iridescent blue glass stones that I loved to look at glittering in the light.

So these are my memories of what it was like to be a little girl in the early 1960’s. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed remembering them. Sherri was right too, now I’ve started there are so many more memories waiting to be written down there just aren’t enough hours in the day to write them.