I am reading a book on creative writing. At the end of each chapter it insists upon written assignments. What the...? I just wanted to read about writing, not actually write about anything. Well, the first assignment is to "brainstorm as many early memories as you can, writing them out in as much detail as possible, dedicating at least a paragraph to each."
The author of this book provides some "prompts to get you started" under headings such as "People" (your favorite or worst teacher is one example); "Places" (the inside of your house is another); and "Things" (an old photograph that sticks out in your mind is yet another). With the assurance that I should not feel restricted by the suggested categories, I now have to brainstorm for two hours. My alarm is set!
If we are talking about the absolute earliest memories I have, how about warmth, light and sound? That might seem odd but I occasionally get transported back to early childhood (like baby in a pram childhood) when I experience one of those sensations--if that is the right word for warmth, light or sound. Just the other day after lunch, I lay down on our big red leather sofa in the family room. I put a woolen blanket over myself (it was 26F outside) and a handkerchief over my eyes because sun was pouring through the French windows behind me.
With a cushion under my legs and another cushion by the side of my head, I lay there and started to go to sleep. But before I dozed off I had this acute and almost euphoric sense that I was lying in my pram in the dining room of my childhood home in South Wales, with patches of light penetrating the darkness now and again.
This "memory" might have been induced by my mother telling me many years later that after "lunch" (the mind boggles) she always put me in my pram in the dining room by the glass doors that led to a sunny verandah at the front of our house in the little village of Nottage. But that sense of warmth and dappled light was my very own "memory" which I have retained these 71 years. Can you have a memory or a remembered sensation from when you were about four months old? I don't know. All I know is that I was not lying there on my red sofa and I was not 71 years old any more. I was in my pram, totally content, enveloped in warmth and sensing the shifting light. That is my first "memory."
The author of this book provides some "prompts to get you started" under headings such as "People" (your favorite or worst teacher is one example); "Places" (the inside of your house is another); and "Things" (an old photograph that sticks out in your mind is yet another). With the assurance that I should not feel restricted by the suggested categories, I now have to brainstorm for two hours. My alarm is set!
If we are talking about the absolute earliest memories I have, how about warmth, light and sound? That might seem odd but I occasionally get transported back to early childhood (like baby in a pram childhood) when I experience one of those sensations--if that is the right word for warmth, light or sound. Just the other day after lunch, I lay down on our big red leather sofa in the family room. I put a woolen blanket over myself (it was 26F outside) and a handkerchief over my eyes because sun was pouring through the French windows behind me.
With a cushion under my legs and another cushion by the side of my head, I lay there and started to go to sleep. But before I dozed off I had this acute and almost euphoric sense that I was lying in my pram in the dining room of my childhood home in South Wales, with patches of light penetrating the darkness now and again.
This "memory" might have been induced by my mother telling me many years later that after "lunch" (the mind boggles) she always put me in my pram in the dining room by the glass doors that led to a sunny verandah at the front of our house in the little village of Nottage. But that sense of warmth and dappled light was my very own "memory" which I have retained these 71 years. Can you have a memory or a remembered sensation from when you were about four months old? I don't know. All I know is that I was not lying there on my red sofa and I was not 71 years old any more. I was in my pram, totally content, enveloped in warmth and sensing the shifting light. That is my first "memory."
The other element of my earliest memories was sound. Sound was all by itself and not associated with my memory of warmth or light. The sounds that I remember were the wind in the telegraph wires outside and, sometimes, a foghorn drifting in from the Welsh sea shore, a few fields away. Of course, I am not saying that I was aware that the sounds were produced by wind and foghorns at four months old!
But whenever I hear wind howling outside our window these days, I have the strangest feeling of familiarity, a call from the past, as if I had entered some sort of time warp. I am not myself anymore, I am not here--I am there, back in our little house in Nottage. Foghorns had the same effect. I remember being on holiday somewhere in North Wales in a seaside B&B with my parents when I was about seven or eight years old. Some time during the night I heard a foghorn and I had that same sensation of being taken out of my body and being returned to early childhood.
Another sound which transports me back to childhood is the sound of a prop-engine plane at night. This is not a baby in a pram memory but certainly a memory of lying in my small bedroom and listening to the drone of a plane engine. There aren't too many prop engines around any more but just last week in England I heard (and saw) a prop-engine plane when I was walking with my brother in the gardens at Hyde Hall in Essex, England. Just that sound, even though it was not the middle of the night, gave me exactly the same feeling of other-worldliness that I used to experience when I was a small child. There is no way to describe that feeling except to say that it was a strange mixture of wonder and utter loneliness.
Maybe I should not have spent so much time on these earliest memories. I have always thought about trying the write about them but could not find the right words. I don't think I have even now but I have produced some words on paper. That's a start.
Other early memories? In our kitchen at home there was a big old wooden radio on the cabinet where my mother kept her best china and other treasures. There was a program called "Children's Hour" on BBC which was broadcast from 1-2pm (I think) every weekday. I am sure the idea was to let harassed mothers deposit their children by the radio and have a small break while their little dears were absorbed by the stories and other diversions.
I loved "Children's Hour" and so did my mother. She rushed around the house like a madwoman, tidying, dusting, making beds, cleaning the bathtub and washing dishes. I remember her telling my father on many occasions that it was the only time she had to herself the whole day. Not exactly leisure time! As soon as the program was over I would yell "Mum, it's over," meaning that she should immediately appear to further amuse me until my father got home.
Are you enjoying any of this? I hate assignments. Only an hour left. It doesn't look much for one hour of typing.
People? I remember that we lived next door to the Goughs and that Mr. Gough worked at my Dad's factory in Margam. They had a little black and white terrier called "Spotty Gough" (to distinguish him from the Turners' dog (of no discernible breed) who was also called Spotty. Not a great deal of imagination went into naming your dog in those days. However, our other next door neighbor had a very large Alsatian (German Shepherd) called Bruno. Bruno would hurl himself at the iron gates at the front of his house on West Road if anyone passed by and scared them half to death if they didn't know him. But when I clambered over the wall to play with him he was the most gentle and loving beast.
My mother used to fret about him and kept telling me that one day Bruno would bite me. "Why don't you go and play with Spotty Gough?" she asked. Well, I did play with Spotty Gough, he was my absolute best friend, but I couldn't wrestle him like I could wrestle with big Bruno. Come to think of it, I was probably lucky that Bruno didn't eat me or chew my arm off. We used to have quite savage battles but I never once got bitten or even scratched.
But whenever I hear wind howling outside our window these days, I have the strangest feeling of familiarity, a call from the past, as if I had entered some sort of time warp. I am not myself anymore, I am not here--I am there, back in our little house in Nottage. Foghorns had the same effect. I remember being on holiday somewhere in North Wales in a seaside B&B with my parents when I was about seven or eight years old. Some time during the night I heard a foghorn and I had that same sensation of being taken out of my body and being returned to early childhood.
Another sound which transports me back to childhood is the sound of a prop-engine plane at night. This is not a baby in a pram memory but certainly a memory of lying in my small bedroom and listening to the drone of a plane engine. There aren't too many prop engines around any more but just last week in England I heard (and saw) a prop-engine plane when I was walking with my brother in the gardens at Hyde Hall in Essex, England. Just that sound, even though it was not the middle of the night, gave me exactly the same feeling of other-worldliness that I used to experience when I was a small child. There is no way to describe that feeling except to say that it was a strange mixture of wonder and utter loneliness.
Maybe I should not have spent so much time on these earliest memories. I have always thought about trying the write about them but could not find the right words. I don't think I have even now but I have produced some words on paper. That's a start.
Other early memories? In our kitchen at home there was a big old wooden radio on the cabinet where my mother kept her best china and other treasures. There was a program called "Children's Hour" on BBC which was broadcast from 1-2pm (I think) every weekday. I am sure the idea was to let harassed mothers deposit their children by the radio and have a small break while their little dears were absorbed by the stories and other diversions.
I loved "Children's Hour" and so did my mother. She rushed around the house like a madwoman, tidying, dusting, making beds, cleaning the bathtub and washing dishes. I remember her telling my father on many occasions that it was the only time she had to herself the whole day. Not exactly leisure time! As soon as the program was over I would yell "Mum, it's over," meaning that she should immediately appear to further amuse me until my father got home.
Are you enjoying any of this? I hate assignments. Only an hour left. It doesn't look much for one hour of typing.
People? I remember that we lived next door to the Goughs and that Mr. Gough worked at my Dad's factory in Margam. They had a little black and white terrier called "Spotty Gough" (to distinguish him from the Turners' dog (of no discernible breed) who was also called Spotty. Not a great deal of imagination went into naming your dog in those days. However, our other next door neighbor had a very large Alsatian (German Shepherd) called Bruno. Bruno would hurl himself at the iron gates at the front of his house on West Road if anyone passed by and scared them half to death if they didn't know him. But when I clambered over the wall to play with him he was the most gentle and loving beast.
My mother used to fret about him and kept telling me that one day Bruno would bite me. "Why don't you go and play with Spotty Gough?" she asked. Well, I did play with Spotty Gough, he was my absolute best friend, but I couldn't wrestle him like I could wrestle with big Bruno. Come to think of it, I was probably lucky that Bruno didn't eat me or chew my arm off. We used to have quite savage battles but I never once got bitten or even scratched.
Talking of dogs, I was never allowed a dog of my own. I had to depend upon the kindness of strangers to provide them. From a very young age, I began to whine about having a dog. My mother was absolutely against having "animals" in the house. They belonged "outside" she would say very firmly and that was the end of the argument. However, little did she know that over a number of years I had maintained several stray cats in our outside lavatory. They sort of came and went but stealing food to feed them was always a cause of great anxiety because my mother noticed the disappearance of a paper clip let alone a whole can of Fray Bentos corned beef.
Further up West Road and along Beach Close, we had the Johns, the Turners and the Hopkins. Mrs Hopkins also had a dog. It was a Chow named Prince and he had a large purple tongue. He was definitely not friendly but Mrs Hopkins was.
She would always give me cake and scones and Tizer pop (fizzy soda). On one memorable occasion she gave me a Space Ray Gun for a Christmas present. It was a big brown plastic ray gun that fired spring-loaded darts which had big rubber suckers at the end, which stuck ferociously to anything they hit. I do remember spitting on the rubber tip (to make it stick better) and firing my ray gun at the dining room wall. It hit the wall with some force and with a very satisfying "THONK" sound and spread a lot of spittle up the wall.
Unfortunately, I could not get it off the wall or reach the red spittle (I had been sucking a red lollipop earlier) that had spread out in all directions. I had to wait for my father to come home. He did manage to remove the offending dart but a big chunk of paint and wall plaster came off with it. My mother was mad at both of us. She said to my father: "What a damn silly toy to give a kid."
When Mrs. Hopkins asked me what my mother had thought about my Christmas present I thoughtlessly repeated: "What a damn silly toy to give a kid". I do remember relations cooled somewhat between my mother and Mrs Hopkins but she still loved me and continued to feed me baked goods whenever I popped around to see her.
I don't think there was a Mr. Hopkins on the scene and my Dad always described her to Mr. Turner as "a real looker." Mr. Turner smoked a pipe and I do remember the name "Hopkins" could produce an involuntary cloud of smoke. I didn't know why. Mrs. Hopkins was the only lady in our neighborhood who wore high heels--even when she was cleaning the house as my mother once noted, and not in a particularly nice way.
Those high heels were the first intimation in my young life that some women had an allure not associated solely with cakes and scones!
When I was eleven, we moved from Wales up to England and I was sent off the boarding school. On my 14th birthday I had been expecting a power bow and arrow set which was all the craze then. Having been at boarding school since I was eleven years old, I had totally forgotten about wanting a dog or pet of any kind. I now urgently needed a power bow. After the long drive home from boarding school, I rushed into the house because my mother had been telling me that my birthday present was "something beginning with "B." Of course, I thought, "BOW" but I couldn't have been more wrong.
After poking my nose in the kitchen, the living room and the dining room, I could see no power bow anywhere. "Where is it, Mum?' I pleaded. "In the kitchen, dear. You never look properly." I re-entered the kitchen and looked around a little more carefully. Still nothing. I was about to turn around and go back into the hallway to remonstrate with Mother when something in the corner caught my eye. A bird cage. With a blue budgerigar in it. What? Something beginning with "B" was a bloody budgie? I nearly fainted. I could not hide my abject disappointment. A budgie? Not even a small dog if I was going to get a pet after 13 years of whining about wanting a dog? Oh boy, I was traumatized. I feel queasy even writing this.
Well, after the initial disappointment, I decided that this little chap was quite fun. They had purchased him some two months before so he was quite at home. He flew straight onto my shoulder and said "Dad's home," which Mother would always say when, you guessed it, my father got home in the evening. Mother had alarmingly named him "Bimbo," a name which did not have quite the same connotations as today.
My father patiently taught Bimbo lots of words and phrases over the years. "Where's Mum." "Where's Ian." "Time for dinner" and all sorts of nonsense. Bimbo's all time favorite was a little ditty that my father had made up for him:
"Little Boy Blue
Has lost his shoe
All the way back to Waterloo."
"I'm Bimbo," he would tell anyone who came to visit--and then burst into his Little Boy Blue ditty.
But he also picked up words and phrases all by himself. I must mention one of the most embarrassing things he ever did. We had a busy-body neighbor named Phyllis Riding. She was a large, domineering woman and was always popping around unannounced to "have a quick chat with Peg" (my mother), which invariably extended to an hour or more. Whenever my mother or father saw Phyllis heaving into view along the front driveway they would always exclaim "Oh God, it's Phyllis Riding!"
Bimbo had perfected this phrase and he absolutely knew who Phyllis Riding was. He could even capture the same exasperated tone of my parents--although a little on the nasal side. Naturally, Bimbo had to be hurriedly put into the dining room with the door closed whenever Mrs. Riding turned up.
On one memorable day, Phyllis found her way into the dining room when my mother had popped upstairs. My mother was coming down the stairs when she saw the dining room door slightly ajar. Then, in horror, she heard the unmistakable words that Bimbo was screeching repeatedly: "Oh God, it's Phyllis Riding...oh God, it's Phyllis Riding....oh God, it's Phyllis Riding!"
Mrs Riding was not amused.
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