Earliest recollections
Another early memory — I would have been three — is moving to that estate and seeing cows outside the window, cows grazing on farmland that would soon be replaced by housing in the great Macmillan building boom of the late 50s and early 60s, one world giving way to another. The move and the cows and the security of the new council house which would be my home for 15 years till I left for university are happy memories, but many of those earliest recollections are painful: The first thing I remember involves me doing something incredibly stupid, which ended up hurting me and causing my parents an enormous amount of stress, because, at the age of two, I was a big believer in starting as one means to go on.
My little sister was eight months old, so my mother was looking after her and my father was supposed to be watching me. But I managed to give him the slip and was wandering around our apartment in New York. I remember walking into our dining room, going towards a chest of drawers, opening the top one and seeing a pack of photos inside.
Certain these must be photos of me narcissist from day zero, baby , I gripped the drawer and pulled myself up so I could see them. Suddenly I was lying on the floor with the chest on top of my legs and my father was picking me up. My poor mother had to spend the next eight weeks looking after a newborn baby and a toddler in a body cast.
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I had just started school. I had a balloon.
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I loved my balloon. I was blowing it up and watching it whiz round the playground. The dinner lady came up to me and tried to confiscate it. I was having great fun, not hurting anybody. I looked at her, and said no. And she snatched it out of my hand. My parents never used that language. I was shamed by the headmaster in the playground.
Even worse, my sister, who at six was two years older, was humiliated.
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We were lined up in the playground, waiting to go inside, and he walked up to me and pulled me out of the line by my ear, and led me to the front. They never told the other pupils what I had done. But they knew it involved a balloon and a dinner lady. I left that school shortly afterwards, for one that was more tolerant of balloon-blowers. It is crystal clear. High-resolution picture, surround sound, date-stamped March She is carrying a bundle of white blankets that I know is my new baby sister Alice. I can see how slowly and carefully my mum moves, and with the primal instinct of small children, I instinctively know, at some level, that this is a moment that changes everything, that the tiny bundle I am laying eyes on for the first time will grow up to be my best friend.
Except in the interest of fact-checking, I just called my mum, 41 years later. It is fairly embarrassing to admit, but I grew up as quite the storyteller. This was met with perplexed expressions, and an interrogation of what was probably a year-old in a cotton wool beard, and not a cannibal Santa.
I have no idea what prompted me to make this up but I like to think it speaks to my florid imagination and is not the mark of a generally duplicitous character. What you believe happened in one year may actually have happened some time later, and what you think you remember might only be the memory of a photograph. But the first memory of which I can be sure is from when I was five. I was sitting in the back of the family Ford Cortina with my sister.
My mother dropped my sister off to return something to a friend and turned the car round and parked up. When my sister returned she got in the other side and told me to budge up, which I did and we set off again. As we went round the first corner, I went flying out of the car as my sister had not shut the door properly. I was unconscious for several hours and remember coming round to find myself at home in bed seeing two versions of my mother. I was six or seven. I remember a whispered conversation.
Mum, a Pentecostal minister with global ambitions, was upscaling. I don't recall any of that, but I was familiar with one of the pictures of myself, as a vey young lad.
What's your earliest recollection? | theranchhands.com
It was then, he said, that things got exciting. A train was approaching, the wig-wag signal started up, and I screeched and headed for the right-of-way fence to get as far away from the train as I could, taking refuge behind the legs of Dad and Grandfather James. I was not to be consoled, and we retreated to the car and went home. We calculated the train must have been a doubleheader, steam of course, heading east to Agincourt Yard. Fast-forward more than six decades.
Not long ago I was sorting through boxes of old family photographs and negatives. Among them, misfiled amid envelopes marked "Summer ," was an unmarked envelope containing the familiar image of Jimmie at the switch.
But the real treat in the same envelope was a pair of negatives—which I had never before seen—showing a doubleheader approaching and receding. Yes, it was CPR. To me these "new" photos are magic, because of their link to my picture with the switch stand, and my familiarity with the CPR in later years. The photo of the train approaching shows the curve at Donlands Mile The receding shot is a wonderful vignette of s railroading: Don Mills Road was important enough to rate wig-wags, and look at how they're decorated.
Imagine that being done today! And the surroundings are entirely urban. But I have absolutely no doubt that these photos are proof of my earliest conscious recollection. First published in Winter Classic Trains magazine. All my life I have had a distinct visual image of looking up at the tracery of branches, as well as the sensation of white blossom falling on to my face. At the time I was lying on my back in the pram I could only have been a few weeks old because apple blossoms in May and I was born on May It is a very clear image. I can actually feel the blossom falling on my cheeks. I am standing in the kitchen and my mother comes through the door, smiles at me, points and says: It's a very clear-cut memory.
That was in 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. So much so I'm glad to be going back on Saturday to open the church fete. And I clearly remember the next door neighbour's brown dog in the small back garden. SARAH BEENY 46, property developer "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.