What are your earliest memories?
I’m sitting in the bay window of my childhood bedroom following the path of raindrops as they make their way down the outside of the glass.
I’m fascinated with how the water catches and wells at the bottom of each V in the diamond shaped leaded panes.
There is no direct route.
Natures tears have to wait their turn to fall to earth.
Gran is washing me in the kitchen sink of a holiday park static caravan, on the Isle of Wight.
It’s my first day at Infant School.
I’m waiting outside the gates with Mummy.
I’m wearing a yellow dress, not school uniform.
Apparently, the last two didn’t happen quite like that.
I suspect memory, second hand story and photograph have been stirred into a generous helping of time to create a fiction-mess.
Are your memories always in colour?
I can see that yellow dress (and feel the scratchy polyester against my bare legs!).
The sink is stainless steel and the kitchen is white; maybe even colourless.
My bedroom walls are peachy-pink.
Floral patterned navy blue curtains are pinched back from the bay, their roses concertinaed in a fabric press.
Those images lead to other images in my mind, spilling out from each room or setting:
I can see the school playground… fragments of games, faces, noise.
Gran is singing to me, lulling me to sleep.
I’m walking out of my bedroom, into the hall.
Doors to the other rooms are open, waiting to be remembered and explored.
What can you remember?
Close your eyes and picture a place or time you know well. It might just start a story…
