Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

I got the idea for part of this post from Lisa Oceandreamer, who has written a lovely piece about her childhood memories. It got me thinking, especially as she asked about other people's early memories, so I spent the time before going to sleep last night, unpacking memories. This is what came out of my memory chest.

I am sitting against a pillow but my head is resting against something furry and brown, and my hands are banging on something covering me. I can see over a small garden wall. Years ago, when I told my mother this memory she thinks that I must have remembered sitting in my big coachbuilt pram. When she was getting ready to go out my mother, would strap me in the pram in the garden if it was a nice day, so she could change her clothes etc. The brown furry thing was my monkey 'Jacko', he was about sixteen inches tall, I was presented with him for my first birthday and used to really love him. The hand baning bit seems to have been me banging my hands on the stormcover of the pram.

My next memory is of being carried upstairs in the dark and crying because I am scared of two glowing lights I can see. Apparently, my mother says she bought me a pair of blue slippers with clock dials on them that glowed in the dark, when my dad carried my up to bed in the dark so I could see them light up I started crying and hiding my face on my dad's chest. I was terried by them. I was about eightenn months old.



The third memory is of sitting on my mother's knee high up in a van, there is snow falling and starting to cover the ground and I really warmly wrapped up, just a big bundle really. There are lots of houses some built, some half built and no proper paths to them, there are piles of bricks everywhere. This was a February when I was two years old we are moving into our first house on a new development which is being built, only the first phase is finished. I lived the first two years of my life in my grandparents house, as after the Second World War there was a severe housing shortage, and there was building starting everywhere to provide more houses, as materials became available again. It was early 1953 when we moved in.

After that things become slightly blurred, vague memories of my father and grandfather planting potatoes, the first year we were in the house, to nourish the ground for planting a real garden the next. Sitting on a step with a little girl giggling together, I remember she had very long thin fingers. The next clear memory is my first day at school.

First day at school, I was happy to go and ready for new experiences, with my birthday being in November I was in the older part of the class. I loved the classroom with its little tables and chairs, and sandpit outside, and cute little camp beds for a nap after lunch. Imagine my disappointment when, we were all told to stand on chairs and some of us, including me were told to get down and line up in the corner. We were then taken to one end of the dining hall where a circle of small chairs had put out around a big freestanding blackboard. We were told to sit on the chairs, and this would be our classroom now. I wasn't amused,as it was also the dining hall and smelt of stale food in the afternoons. The teacher told me that we were the older and clever ones so we had been sent up to the next class! The truth of the matter, as many years later I found out was that there had been a baby boom in the six years after the war and infant schools were desperately overcrowded. There were far too many children for one classroom, about forty five, so the fifteen oldest, were taken away to form a new class, but alas, there was no classroom so my first year at school was spent in the dining hall and our drawers where our books and paper etc were kept were in the corridor between the dining hall and the reception class I should have been in. I had so wanted to be in that classroom with the lovely equipment. However, all was not lost, as the next year, a temporary reception classroom had been made, with the cute little beds in there, now in my second year we were to inhabit that lovely classroom I discovered on my first day at school.



I have been tagged by Beth so here goes!


1. Which famous person would you most like to learn that you descended from?
I think John Dee, a fascinating man, who was a seer and 'magician' at the court of Elizabeth I. A man who believed there were great unknown mysteries in this world and others, he was also an alchemist.

2. Which famous person would you hate to learn that you were descended from?
The Witchfinder general, Matthew Hopkins, who lived at the time of the English Civil War and was a cruel sadistic man who burnt too many innocent harmless women.

3. If you could be an ancestor to any famous living person who would it be and why?
I think I would like to have been an ancestor of any great musical theatre star who was the toast of Broadway and the WestEnd, and they would say,'.. of course, my talent must have come from Daisy Lupin, a marvellous singer, and was my aunt...'

4. If you could go back in time and meet any known ancestor of yours, who would it be and why?
I think I would like to go back and meet my great grandfather, Alfred, so I could pick his brains about gardening.




FIVE WEIRD THINGS ABOUT ME!!
Only Five ?
1. I am left handed
2. I can communicate with most cats, some tell me interesting things, cats in different areas have slightly different cadences in speech, much like local accents.
3. I had an imaginery friend as a child called John, he only joined me when my own friends were not around.
4. I think I might have once heard a banshee, and yes there was a death at the time.
5. I once saw a UFO



Well, I can't think who to tag, as I have seen this on quite a few people's sites. Let me think .... I will tag Gemma, Pam and Kai, three glitter gals. Don't worry if you have done it or don't want to do it. I don't mind.

One last thought, I really adore the picture above right, I love the idea of the young girl staring into the fire dreamily, with the little kitty on her knee. She is totally lost in a world of her own making. Probably dreaming of princesses, dragons, handsome princes and fairies. It is called 'Firelight Fancies'