General Chat

Thinking about what elderly relatives can tell us about their forebears - so necessary to get them on tape or write their reminiscences down before they pop off - I started wondering what I will pass on to my grandchildren. I havn't got any yet but I think I will help out any future genealogy addicts in my family by jotting down dates and memories. I think everyone should do this. I have found piecing together the lives of relatives and wondering about the quality of their lives in relation to the political and social history of the time fascinating. Everyone has an interesting life, whether they think so or not, as it represents the time they live in. Anyway, my earliest memory is my Mum and Grandma struggling down my Grandmother's house steps, where we lived, me sitting in the pram. I would have been under a year old. I also remember lying in the pram, which was parked at the bottom of the stairs. I remember this occasion because I had just made a momentous discovery. I had obviously been yelling for attention and I discovered that if I patted my chest at the same time I made a different sound. I also remember my doll falling down the stairs and her head smashing into dozens of pieces, which my parents tried to stick together with tape to pacify me. All this happened before 1950. What are the earliest memories of others? These are the things that cannot be learnt from official records.

Julie, I have a vivid memory of being in my grandmothers house in Brighton and looking down at my shoes, which were little brown ones. I was also wearing a red suit and hat. The trousers of the suit were similar to old-fashioed spats in that they had a piece of material that covered the toe of my shoes with a piece of elastic going under my shoes to keep them on. I can also remember that my grandmother was hoovering at the time with an old vacuum cleaner that scared me witless! I spoke to my mum about this a few years ago and she confirmed that I did indeed have a suit exactly as I described and was no more than a year old at the time I was wearing it. Perhaps this has stayed in my memory because of the fear of the hoover? pam

Gosh Julie, it's strange your first memory being about patting your chest to make a different sound. Mine is being pushed in my pushchair along a bumpy path and going AAAAA - it made a funny sound, My mum stopped and asked me what was wrong I remember 'saying' nothing, but I was too young to talk! I thought this odd, until my youngest daughter was beoaning the fact I never answered her questions when she was younger. I asked her for a specific time, she said when we were moving - she was a year old and couldn't talk!

My first memory is of sitting quite high up, so probably in a high-chair, situated between the fireplace and the dining table which was set, but my impression is that we had had our meal. I can only think that I had been left in the care of my brother, because I know he switched the light off, so there was just the flickering flames of the fire to light the room, and my brother was shining a torch underneath his chin and pulling faces. I don't remember being frightened, but I didn't like it. He would have been about eleven and me about one year old. Boys don't change do they? I know this is my earliest memory, and yet my husband can't remember anything very much before the age of seven when he came back to England with his mother and brother from the States.

My earliest memory is sitting at the bottom of the garden wearing my aunties straw hat and eating black treacle from a tin using a corset bone. Treacle everywhere - not well received. I was about 18 months old.

Hello Keith, What a super picture you paint. Aunties straw hat, and you with a corset bone and black treacle!!!! Bet you looked a right bobby dazzler. Norah lol

My earliest memory is being pushed in my pram (yellow, with very small white dots), by my parents, on a very chilly, sunny morning and the check blue, yellow, pink and white woollen blanket covering me, was wrapping itself round the front wheel, I can remember my Dad bending down and unwrapping it and complaining each time it happened. I was probably about two. This memory is so clear, and precious because I was born with visual impairment, and I had to wait several years for operations, so my sight because very bad after this. I have made it easy for people to know things about me in the future, I have kept diaries for 30 years.

My earliest memory is just before my 1st birthday and I was sitting in a high chair with my favorite toy, a pink and blue vinyl type horse.A man was in the kitchen with a large thing round his neck and a light kept flashing and I was not impressed.I found out in later years It was a man from the newspapers taking my photo, as my birthday is the same day as Prince Charles and he is 1 hour older than me.When I was born my parents were presented with two large parcels of fruit(one dried and the other fresh) from the royal household.I still have the cutting and it reads Linda Patricia Bentley of Holloway Road London wore a thoughtful expression, perhaps she realised that life wouldn't always be full of cake and candles..(How very true).My next memory is aged 18 mths.Sitting on my grandmothers knee as she sat at her treadle sewing machine making dresses for rosebud dolls as outwork.later that day being clever I put the sewing machine neeedle right through my finger...but all was made better with a dolly bandage on my finger and a boiled egg and soldiers for tea Lynn

I can remember being a baby and rolling off the settee when my mother went to have her lunch also being in a pram.I remember looking through the window and seing the dark night.Being picked up and put on a bunny rug to have my photo taken.