April 2022 A Childhood Memory
A Childhood Memory
“Ah yes, I remember it well”
On the principle that the one thing our age-group is rich in is memory, A Memory of Childhood was the theme. The memories were half and half nice or not so. Gill recalled a nightmare visit to the dentist for the removal of two teeth using the terrifying gas anaesthetic customary in the 1940s: a wonderful drive though the Yorkshire Dales and lunch out with the family had been reduced to misery. Alex and Philippa ‘remembered the war’. Alex, growing up in pre-partition India, witnessed the rioting on the streets of Calcutta when Moslems and Hindus slaughtered each other. Her ayah dragged her down from a window with the awful warning, ‘They will kill you British Baba,’ before hiding her under the bed. Philippa, reminded by the spectacle of refugees fleeing war in Europe once more, remembered the terrible suffering endured by those who experienced Second World War, and thinking ‘How could they survive that and live?”
Paula’s dad had been a copper and, by the way, an expert on the unexploded weapons left hanging around after the war. Her mum used to paint the detonated hand-grenades primrose yellow and use them for door stops. ‘Her philosophy: “If it moves then wash and iron it; if not, paint it yellow”,’. Penelope’s memory was of youthful disobedience. Age seven she rode the ‘utterly magical’ ride to school through the woods. But this short-cut was forbidden. Her mother decreed the three miles trip by road. Then one day, emerging from the forbidden wood onto the road, there was ‘our car and my mother in the driving seat. Oh help!’ In the showdown her mother cited ‘Nasty men hiding behind trees.’ Young Penelope didn’t believe a word, and ignored her.
Tim’s memories took him back in his beloved South Wales hearing again the ‘harsh hum’ of the electric trams that ran round Swansea Bay, and the seeing again the view of the international rugby and cricket ground that could be glimpsed from the sitting room of his grandparents’ flat.
Karen conjured up a childhood haunted by the minimally understood language of village cricket. Picking blackberries from the hedgerows she was ‘caught, leg before thicket’. There were ‘no ducks in our stream’ where she revelled ‘deep in squelchy sludge’. ‘Looking back on this youthful maiden’s over’ she recognised cricket’s ‘bond between father and daughter, with fondness, still declared’. It was an eloquent exercise in nostalgic word play.