Your first memories of being naughty toddlers, babes in arms ...and beyond

AFTER scientists declared that anything we remember before the age of two is imagined, Mail readers begged to differ, with their striking memories of babyhood . . . DURING the Bristol Blitz in 1940, I remember broken glass from the windows covering the blankets in my cot. I was seven months old. When I spoke to my father about this incident years later, he was amazed that I remembered it.

Mrs J. COCKING, Bristol. I reCaLL sleeping under the dining table with my pregnant mother and auntie during the war. and getting slapped across my legs for opening a blackout blind to look at the planes — I was hoping daddy would wave to me!

CAROL TAHRI, Caversham, Berks. ONE day when I was two (pictured), I toddled out of the back door and wandered into a neighbour’s house in the hope of getting a treat. But she had gone to the shops. The door slammed and, not being able to get out, I cried myself to sleep. Mum, neighbours and farm labourers searched the fields, woods and country lanes for me until I was found when the neighbour returned. I will never forget the look on Mum’s face. JACKIE NUNNEY, Barnstaple, Devon.

I REMEMBER Daddy coming home from work as a Sunday newspaper reporter in Fleet Street. I was aged two-and-a-half. He gave me a toy car and Jelly Babies before being greeted by my mother with: ‘Gin and tonic — ready and poured!’ This is one of my few memories of my father, who died when I was three. ANGUS W. RAE, Durham. MY MEMORIES begin before birth. From infancy, I’ve had a recurring nightmare of being trapped in a space from which the only exit is too small for me. VALERIE BUTTON, Cullompton, Devon. I WAS three when I went to a street party for the wedding of Charles and Diana. The only thing I remember was spilling squash down my white dress! T. NICHOLS, Basildon, Essex. I RECALL sitting in my grandparents’ living room watching Princess Diana’s funeral on TV when I was three. CLAIRE HARRIS, Bromley, Kent. I WAS born while Dad was serving with the Royal Engineers in Italy and North Africa. I was four when he was demobbed and we all went to meet him off the train. He picked up Mum, twirling her round and kissing her. I hid behind her legs because he was a stranger to me. Mrs MOLLY DEMIDIUK, Northampton. I RECALL having whooping cough and being on my grandmother’s knee at the fireside when she told my father: ‘Move over, Bill, let the heat get through to this child.’ This was after my mother had died in childbirth when I was 18 months old and before my father remarried before my second birthday. GLORIA BATABYAL, Manchester. IN THE early Forties, we were doing a moonlight flit to escape debt and gossip. Dad, who was not my father, was pulling a handcart on which I perched with my brother Micky, who was not my real brother. Mam had a babe in arms, who wasn’t my sister. Mam and Dad were married, but not to each other. When I repeated this memory to my mother years later, she was astonished, as she said I had been just three. JOY JAMES, Nottingham. I WAS conceived in Eastbourne. On a cricket tour 40 years later, having never visited the town, I knew every hotel, landmark and street. Bizarre! MIKE SHERISTON, Nottingham.