Lockdown, Part 24: Memories

What is your first memory? Now there's a question, and I've always answered with the time when my brother was brought home from the maternity ward, a toy train for me concealed beneath his shawl. I was in what was the front room of the house. But was it my first memory? As it turned out, no. I started to wrack my brains for more, but could only initially move forward from the point when my brother arrived home. I started working on actual years to see if anything could jog my memory further. I certainly remember the so-called Ferranti 'radiogram' and Beatles singles on the Parlophone label - Hard Day's Night springs to mind, I vaguely remember watching the funeral of Winston Churchill on our monochrome television and, a year later, the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley but, for a short while, I had trouble going back from the toy train moment, and yet there were things that started to reveal themselves, like when we moved from the bottom of our road to the top and how I was standing with dad outside 3a, the maisonette, waiting to move up the hill to number 29. Dad said we'd have to wait for 'auntie' Yvonne to walk down the road towards us before we could go up, and to this day I can never understand why we have to wait for her. It will remain one of life's mysteries as both dad and Yvonne are no longer with us. My brother was brought home to number 29 so standing at the bottom of the road waiting for auntie Yvonne pre-dates the toy train moment. I have only vague memories of 3a, with its unforgiving exterior concrete staircase, and even vaguer memories of the interior. There was a brick fireplace, I remember that, and a black dog and a lady called Daphne, but that's about it.

Something that will always stick with me is being awake in the back bedroom of number 29, the waning daylight penetrating the floral curtains, the birdsong, early on a summer's evening, probably around 6pm, dad yet to arrive home from work with his trademark knock on the door and the distant sound of bells from St. Philomena's convent school across the railway tracks. This must have pre-dated the birth of my brother as I don't remember sharing the room at that point. My sister would have been in the box room, mum and dad in the front room with the bay window.

We lived in a cul-de-sac and received weekly visits from what we called the Corona lorry. It was carrying Corona soft drinks, but I can't remember us ordering any, it was simply something to watch out for if we were playing in the streets 'after tea' - a treat at the best of times. There was a laundry and a bakery lorry too, the latter going by the name of Riddington's. The laundry service delivered rectangular boxes made of heavy duty cardboard and containing pressed shirts and trousers for dad. There was the occasional ice cream van playing Greensleeves, and regular deliveries of milk from Express Dairy based around the corner in Shorts Road. I would later help out 'Dynamic Norman', a film buff who chain-smoked, on a milk round through a fairly posh part of nearby Wallington. I can't remember how much I was paid, but whenever my mum, or anybody in the family, asked me if I was going on my milk round, I would reply, "Might, I don't know."

The sun was always shining back then and the long summer days were taken up playing in the garden, getting up close and personal with various wild things such as ants and snails and worms and digging holes with small trowels. There was one occasion when mum made a golf course out of dad's immaculate lawn. He wasn't impressed.

The summer holidays were huge chunks of idle time spent riding bikes and playing in the road or standing around chatting with our pals who, like us, were in the same boat, trying to find things to do during the long school holidays that nobody wanted to end. There was nothing worse than 'back to school' and a new class, one year older but none the wiser and nothing to look forward to but cold weather and the boredom of the non-descript month of October when nothing much happened. November brought fireworks followed by mum's birthday and then my birthday was all that stood between us and the festive season. I remember dad coming home on the days prior to Christmas loaded with Hamley's bags, but we never twigged that he was Father Christmas, thanks to that bell he'd rigged up in the bathroom. 

There were two big moments in our year: Christmas and our annual holiday to the south coast. Dad went the extra mile for both of them. Christmas morning was magical. We would sleep lightly on Christmas Eve, wake up around 0400hrs and sneak down to see what Father Christmas had left us. Dad, for it was he, had spent an inordinate amount of time transforming the front room into a toy shop with three wonderful displays of toys and books and we loved every minute of it. These were the days when the seasonal television was worth watching, when mum's Christmas cake, the turkey dinner, selection boxes of chocolate and other delights made every second worthwhile, but we were forever moving towards January when the tree would come down and we'd have to go back to school.

What sticks with me most - to this day - was our summer holidays on the south coast. Dad rented a house right on the beach and we had two weeks of sunshine (most of the time) playing on the beach, sending clockwork motorboats across rockpools, eating fish & chips, and digging castles in the sand. I still go down there now, still look longingly at the very houses we occupied along with 'uncle' Brian, 'auntie' Yvonne and their son Tim. They weren't really our uncle and aunt, they were neighbours, from number 28. Brian and Yvonne were mum and dad's pals, they often came round of an evening for drinks and cheese footballs and because Brian, Yvonne and dad smoked there was always a smell of cigarettes the next morning, a few left over snacks (the aforementioned cheese footballs and some Twiglets) and Brian would always forget his lighter. I remember playing with it, wearing down the flint, smelling the gas.

As we grew older, life became less magical as the true realities of life started to impinge on our happiness, like passing exams, passing driving tests, drinking and rowing with our parents. Eventually, all that was good became a distant memory to discuss occasionally, like when I meet Bon, that little baby who brought me the toy train under his shawl, on Woodmansterne Green. Our main topic of conversation will always be those holidays in Felpham and we could talk for hours about them before cycling home to our own families.

I worry sometimes that my kids don't have similar memories and I wish that they did, but I fear that today's children are forced to grow up quicker than we did, they don't have trainsets and Action Men and toy soldiers, they don't have wooden forts like I did. Their imaginations come tailor-made in video games and by the time they're in their early teens they're almost adults and look nothing like I used to look with my crepe-soled sandals, shorts, socks and tee-shirt with an anchor motif. We were dressed by our parents in roll neck jumpers and 'slacks' and as a result have never become 'fashion victims' but equally have never been 'snappy dressers'.

There are too many memories to document here, some good, some bad, but when they next surface I'll be writing again. Until then, go make your own memories.