EST RECOLLECTION?
“My earliest childhood memory is moving into my family home in Harefield, Middlesex, when I was about two years old. That was in 1953. I remember going into the house with my mother and father. It was very bright and big but so dusty because everything was brand new. It was our first home so naturally I was very excited. It was a place that was to be a source of much love, joy and happiness. So much so I’m glad to be going back on Saturday to open the church fete.” “My mother was pushing me in an old-fashioned pram with a little white canopy over it to shield me from the sun and all I can remember her saying is, ‘I’ll put the canopy up.’ I must have been around two or two and a half years old. That would have been in Bath where I was born because we moved to Portsmouth not long after. And I clearly remember the next door neighbour’s brown dog in the small back garden.” “You never know if your earliest memories come from photographs or are genuine memories but I think mine was lying in a hammock that was between two apple trees at our family home in Risely, Berkshire. My older brother Diccon and I used to lie in it and then hold on to the sides. My mum and dad would swing us so hard that we would go all the way round in a circle. I was probably about four at the time. My next earliest memory was when I was seven and I sat on a nest of red ants. That was quite painful.” “The earliest thing I recall is not being very happy when my sister Tina was born. At the time I thought, ‘Who’s this that’s come in and taken all of my mum’s attention away?’ I was around four or five years old. I started to like her but it took a while. On my first day at primary school I became even more upset because Tina, who is two years younger than me, got to stay at home while I was at school. I remember feeling traumatised watching my mum walking away from the school gates. Nowadays you are allowed to ease your child in gently but back then they just took you to the school gates and left.”