whats your first memory

Think I must only have been two or three, but I can remember creeping into my parents bedroom and opening mums wardrobe door ever so slightly. Inside was an absolute treasure of beautifully coloured and sparkly dresses, kind of lurex and sequins. Used to do that often. Also loved her shoes with the heels, they made little indents on the bits of floor that had lino on it. Mum and dad liked to dance. I think that’s where my love affair with colours and glitters started. My craft box is stuffed with it and I have some glittery and colourful items about the place.

Not my first memory but quite a vivid one. I don't think it would be so much fun with modern plasticised haystacks.

When I was six I had a holiday in the countryside and my grandmother taught me to do backward somersaults off the top of a haystack.

Most of my earliest memories are from when I was 3 in 1947. I woke up on my 3rd birthday to snow but while I was excited about that it also meant my favourite aunt and uncle might not be able to get to us. I remember playing on the varandah in the snow and then looking up to see my Aunt. My brother was born in July 1947 and I went to stay with said aunt and uncle on the other side of London. They were going on holiday so took me to Ramsgate with them. I stayed at their house for another week before my Mum and Dad came with my new brother. I remember standing at the door waiting to see the car come round the corner with a trailer with the big pram on. But when my Mum got out of the car and came running to hug me I turned into my aunt's skirts and cried "I don't like that lady ". My Mum was heartbroken because she had missed me so much.

We moved house when I was 3 1/2 and I have lots of memories of that old house. Mainly outdoors, playing in the garden. I do vaguely remember being in my room whilst it was dark and my parents trying to comfort my baby sister who is 2 1/4 years younger than me, so I must have been about 2 1/2.

I also have a clear picture of a pair of hands, and I kid myself these may have been the hands of the midwife, but they could also have been my mother's hands at any other time during babyhood.

Being asleep in my cot and visitors being brought up to see wake me. Must have been about 2.
I remember my first day at school aged 4, vividly as I peed in the playground and was kitted out in the Headmistress's son's pants held together with a safety pin. oh the ignominy ....

Sorry

Wilma The pushchair ran into my ankles and regardless of the fact that it obviously hurt me she was angry with me. My mother, is long gone but she still shouts at me in my dreams, whatever I do!!! Unlike your Granny she was never wonderful to me.

In the few photos of me that exist I have hair cut straight round tied in a bow at the top with a clip behind it. I would have loved hair long enough to plait. Poor you though. If you were a child today you would have to have counselling!! {wink}

One memory I definitely remember is standing outside in the garden of the nursing home where my Mum was after she had my younger brother. She was on the first floor and spoke to us out the window. My Dad was carrying my other brother who had just turned 3 and I was standing with my duffle coat on. I had my hood up because my Granny had cut off my long plait at the neck because she didn't have the patience to plait it for me in the morning before school (I was staying with her whilst my Mum was away). My Dad didn't want my Mum to see and get upset.

My Granny was wonderful to me, but she was a real dame. My teacher thought my hair might have been cut off as a punishment and my poor Grandad had to tell her what happened. My parents never forgave her for cutting my hair like that. I have a photo of me and my brother sitting on the couch holding my new baby brother in his christening gown on our laps. I'm wearing my new school uniform because I'd just started school and I'm smiling away with my bowl hair cut.

I love this thread too Grandma2213. . Is there a word missing from this sentence in your post?

It ran into my ankles and I was shouted at by my mother.

It's amazing how young some of you were.

I love this thread. Personal stories are so much more interesting than what we read in history books.

My first memory must have been when I was about 2 or 3. I am told we had been living in a shed in somebody's garden after we came back from Ireland and I remember jumping out of my pushchair with excitement when we went to visit our first house. It ran into my ankles and I was shouted at by my mother. It must have been 1949 and maybe my mother was pregnant with my brother who was born in the September because I don't remember a big pram for him. This was a railway house as my dad was a signalman and it had oil lamps, a chemical toilet across the yard and a shared tap outside, all of which I remember.

I have other vague memories of my dad finding me one roller skate ( I never did get a pair), a chicken running round the yard with no head and some of our neighbours as it was a terrace of 4 houses.

My next clear memory was sitting having breakfast with the door open on my first day at school. It was beautiful sunshine and my dad was getting me all excited about going on the bus. I think I was well over 5 as my mother told me later there was no room in the schools because we were the 'boom' babies.

My third birthday party, very exciting for me as it was the first party I had ( and as it turned out the only party I would have.)
I think we only remember things that are ‘stand out’ days.
The next memory was of starting school aged five, I was new to school and it was also a very new school, only just built.I was very tempted to nibble a fat purple crayon.

paddyann
My great aunt Ellen used to plait her hair into 'earphones', long before Princess Leia thought of it!

I remember going with my dad to visit my mum in hospital, and waving to her through the window on the way out.
It must have been when my brother was born so I was nearly two and a half.

I was only young when I left my beautiful doll out in her pram in the sun. When I went to get her, her eyes had fallen into her head. She used to blink and go to sleep before that, but after Mum glued her eyes back she could only manage a fixed stare!

some lovely memories here ,Juggernaut I particullary like your GG and her long hair.My G had hair like that too,she used to plait it and wrap it into "earphones " we loved watching her do her hair

I remember standing behind my great-grandmother brushing her hair with a silver backed brush. She always sat on a straight backed chair, never in an armchair.
She was part Cherokee and her hair was very long and silver grey and cascaded down past her waist.
She died when I was seventeen months old, so I was definitely very young.

I remember (when we lived practically on the beach which was at the bottom of our garden) hearing thunder and seeing lightning. Dad came to 'rescue' my younger brother and me (aged about 2 and 3) wrapped us up in an eiderdown and sat us by the fire in the sitting-room whilst mum made us Ovaltine. All very comforting. I also remember having my tonsils and adenoids out aged 4. In at 4pm out next day at 10ish, so mum told me. I had iced milk to drink and slept in a child's cot. They took out tonsils at the drop of a hat in those days.

I remember sitting in the pram in the front garden when I was about 1 year - it was one of those huge Silver Cross ones - my brother brought out a picture book to me,

I would have been 18 months at the time of the Coronation and I can remember being at our gate with the rest of the family. I was in a pram and we watched people on dark red jackets with musical instruments. The band had formed up further along our road to march into the village for the celebrations.

Being carried over my dad's shoulder, eyes squeezed tight shut, and my sister hopping up and down with rage because I should be walking and wasn't really asleep (he knew!). Crawling out of a den made of a big rough blanket over a clothes horse, carrying the black China doll I loved, and when I stood up seeing that her face was smashed in - I was inconsolable. My dad coming home with a car and not being allowed to run down the long garden path with the rest of the family to see it because I refused point blank to have my dad's scarf on (it was brown, and too big). I had to watch from the window.

Strangely, my sister told me recently that I used to be absolutely terrified as a toddler by peacocks that lived in the village and would settle on my bedroom window sill and stare in, honking loudly with their beaks wide open. I'd be running screaming from this even now , but I don't have any memory of them at all.

What a fascinating thread! My very first memory is of sitting on a bus and seeing the back of the drivers seat which had a sort of leather drop down shade thing (can't think of a more appropriate description). We were going to visit my Nanny in Bexleyheath and I must have been about 2. Another memory is of being cradled on my mother's lap listening to Listen with Mother on the radio - or wireless as it was called then. My mother was rocking me to try and get me off to sleep, patting my back and singing 'she's a poor little girl' over and over again - I was probably crying. We had been listening to a story about someone called Mary-Ann O'Shaunnesy and it was sad. I remember watching Andy Pandy and also Bill & Ben, The Flower Pot men on the TV. Not sure how old I was but would have been pre-school.

Also remember my first day at school and crying as I watched through the classroom window, my Mum walking away.

I played with a box of matches too, with very dramatic results but just a blister on my finger fortunately. I was younger than 5 and it was November 5th. There was a box of Benghal matches in the box of fireworks on the kitchen table. I was on a chair and reached the box and struck one. I watched it burn in changing colours, but when the flame reached my finger I dropped it into the box of fireworks. I remember my DF running in and taking the box of exploding fireworks out of the door and throwing them in the garden. Lucky escape. I don't remember being punished. Perhaps they were in shock and possibly feeling bad about leaving them where I could reach.

Visiting my GPs, Granddad was a Signalman & they lived in the Station House. I would walk down the Sidings to the Signal Box. I loved the Steam Trains but they terrified me if I was walking along the Sidings. I must have been about 4 at the time. I have a lifelong love of Railways & Steam Trains.

At the age of 3 I climbed up the ladder onto the roof of our house where DF was whitewashing the chimney stack.

Nellie!