Formative years

The years between 18 months and 4 are a blur, as I suspect they are with most people. In those years of course one is building a personality and already forming a way of looking at the world, so although there are few memories, the subconcious mind is growing at an exponential rate. During that time we learn to walk, talk, and come to terms with countless concepts that only come from experience.

My parents moved from the house in the woods into a council house in a nearby village. This had three bedrooms, a lounge, a kitchen and a scullery. There was an outdoor lavatory and cold running water. There was no bathroom as such and water had to be heated in a copper that was coal powered. Coal was the only source of heat and the house lay on the outskirts of the village and was exposed to some vicious winds. There was no double glazing of course and in the winter, everything froze. It was the norm to scrape ice from the insides of the windows and I remember being fascinated by the patterns that ice crystals made as they formed.

Soon after we moved into this house, a place that my father would never leave, my sister was born. She was a home birth and I recall a lot of fuss and towels and people coming and going and then the house was more full than it had been. Another year passed and then a little brother, also born at home, and the family was complete, in numbers anyway.

During this period my father worked as a carpenter for a local furniture company. He was good at his job but it paid little and he felt obliged to seek work further afield in order to earn sufficient money to feed the mouths that he had helped create. The job turned out to be in a car factory some 50 miles away. This made for a long working day and was probably the beginning of his decline, and maybe even mine.

I have memories of Wagner's Tannhauser overture being played very loud and coming downstairs and conducting to it. Then being ushered back to bed.

I remember my grandparents' house and watching TV for the fist time; a small bakelite box that showed one TV channel only, and that for a few hours a day. I remember being utterly bored and impatient for teatime and tired of sitting on the floor, then being taken home in grandfather's car and being sick from eating too much rich food. At home food was mealtimes only and then it was very plain fare. Money was scarce and so were luxuries.

I recall being in a pram and seeing a man on a bicycle ride past, as he did so he took something white from his mouth and threw it away. This happened more than once and I wondered what it was. Eventually I learned that it was a cigarette. I must have been very young at that time.

I recall being put into the branches of a tree to have a photograph taken and being left there and unable to get down. I am beginning to find a pattern in my life already!

I also have some memory of pain. Not being able to walk well without it. I remember being taken to the doctor by bus and I vaguely recall my mother having to carry me home. She had been told by him, not to let me walk. I had been diagnosed with TB and was taken into hospital the following day. I remember vividly, being left there and feeling bewildered and utterly abandoned. I was four years old - just. A chapter had finished and a new one was about to begin.