About “Flashbacks”

I stayed at my parents' house during the summer of 2005, my twentieth summer, and memories felt almost tangible in the air. I walked by, or near, many of the places that fill my thoughts of a childhood long-gone. The memories aren't gone, though, not by any means. They come to my mind, one at a time or in an uncontrollable rush, as vivid and emotional as they were on the day they really happened – or, in some cases, the day they didn't happen…

This page is an attempt to record some of those memories, the events and places and people that shaped my youth. There's nothing chronological, or geographical, about the order I have recalled things in here. Just the order in which those memories came to mind.

Egotistical? Maybe. Of interest to others? Probably not. But there's days when my mind feels full of fuzz, days when I feel like I might just forget something and let it slip away. This is to make sure that doesn't happen, to keep my past from disappearing, to anchor me somewhere, to stop me becoming someone who knows only the present. And maybe one day a psychologist will read this and be able to find the point at which I became identifiably 'weird'…

Flashbacks

My Earliest Memory

Where my memories actually start has proved a trickier question than I'd have thought. I used to think I remembered falling asleep in my dinner of spaghetti at age two, but on thinking about it more I realise that I probably don't actually remember this – after all, who does remember falling asleep? – but was probably told about it at a later date.

Rather, what probably counts as my earliest memory was a trip to my Nana's at age three. There is a picture somewhere, taken just before the visit, of me wearing a wastepaper bin on my head – for some reason, remembering that picture brings back a few more memories of that day. Nothing about the visit itself, sadly – things like the feeling of green deep pile carpet beneath my sockless feet.

Rowans and Rosebushes: The Places We Lived

We lived in a house in Stratton Road until I was about two. Apart from one photo of us playing in the front garden, I can't remember the place at all. I probably wouldn't even be able to pick out the house if I were to walk down that road these days…

From then until two days before my eleventh birthday, we lived in Thorncombe Close. That place I remember in vivid detail, from the living room with its exposed brick and uncomfortable sofas to the upstairs room that was at times my bedroom, my play room, the study and a storage room for Christmas presents on the day I snuck in and saw the bike that I was to be given in a few days' time…

Not My Family, but Other Animals

(Gerald Durrell reference entirely intentional. I read the book whose title I just misquoted when I was about eleven, I think. I don't remember it very well, perhaps I should read it again sometime.)

Thanks, I think, to my dad's allergies, I never did have very many pets. My first were goldfish – I think there was a gold one called Goldie and a black one called Blackie, and there may also have been a smaller one that we had. I forgot the name, if I do remember correctly.

We had two hamsters at various points in my childhood – the first, Hammy (original, huh?), had a fondness for yoghurt and for gnawing at the little knobs on the side of the mahogany magazine stand. I think she died not long after I first had some idea of what death actually was, and I cried for hours – in my parents' bed, if I recall correctly, which probably ruined their plans for an early night.

The second hamster was named Haffertee, I think after a hamster in a children's story. With hindsight we probably should have called her Houdini instead, for she possessed a remarkable talent for escapology – and for survival, as after one escape she remained in hiding for four days until we eventually found her curled up in the little warm space behind the oven. Looking back, I guess she really didn't like that cage. I don't blame her, transparent plumbing's not really my thing, either!

Actually, on an animal-related note, I do remember one embarrassing thing… My mum always used to shoo cats out of the garden by making a kind of rasping noise – “pshhht!”. I guess the association stuck in my young mind, as at some later point I demonstrated my animal knowledge by recalling, with pictorial prompting, that cows go “moo”, dogs go “woof”, and – guess what – cats go “pshhht”. I think my mum's still getting me back for all the times I embarrassed her when I was a kid.

The Kids Next Door

There were two boys who lived next door. I'm not sure if, between the three of us, we were the only kids in the road, but it certainly felt like it. I don't remember any others. The eldest, a year older than me I think, was David – the other, about two years younger, was called James. I think. They may be the other way around, or I might be completely wrong…

Either way, time obscures from my memory just how good friends we were. I suspect we were pretty close friends, because I can't remember playing with any other neighbourhood kids.

I'm told David joined the army and served in Afghanistan. For all I know, he may still be there, patrolling the streets of Basra. As for James, I have no idea…

Slides of Blue and Orange

About ten second's walk from our garden gate was a park with a see-saw and an aging blue-painted roundabout, and I think some swings. Thoughts and memories of this place have the overwhelming emotion of “ours!” attached to them – this park was where we went so often as kids, and it was so close, that even if others did use it from time to time it still felt personal to us.

At age three, I fell off the see-saw there and had to have stitches in hospital. I still bear the whitened scar on my head, starting just below my hairline. I have no idea how far up it goes. I don't remember the incident itself – I guess I probably would have been knocked unconscious – but I do have very faint memories of the hospital.

Only a few minutes' walk up a concrete path was another park, this one having a slide that was almost identifiable still as orange, although in truth it was probably nearer yellowy-pink. The whole place was overshadowed by tall trees, and the floor littered with acorns that we occasionally collected. We didn't go there much, though. The park with the blue slide was ours; this one wasn't.

The Fire

There was a fire, one day, at one of the houses that had a back garden touching that path between the parks. I don't think it was anything serious – I don't even remember there being a fire engine – but I remember some of the people who lived around there standing with us, a tall fence between us and the house, trying to work out whether it was a proper house fire or not. We (presumably David and I) had some kind of radio-controlled car with us that day, and we were driving it up and down the path when we first saw the smoke.

Cycling on Grass

Cycling on grass, as I discovered not once or even twice but three times, is not as easy as on a path. It was the same field where I first was taught how to ride (and fell off), first rode up and down the embankment (and fell off), and where I first tried to do hand signals (and fell off). I think I was too frightened to try it on the smooth tarmac path, realising that it would be easier but knowing it would hurt so much more if I did fall…

The Fields They Built On

Although “I remember when all this were fields…” is a bit of an exaggeration, bits of my childhood revolved around fields that aren't quite the same anymore. There was the big playing field where we spent so much time – I still remember when they tarmacked the path, when they built the hill with the big slide on it, when they built the community centre, and when they built the basketball courts too. Thankfully, though, there's still to this day plenty of field left.
Incidentally, the only time I went into that community centre was for a party of some kind, when I was about six. I won an award for best dancing. They must have had really low standards.

There was another small field up the road next to the doctors, full of little hills and tall, dry grass – perfect territory for adventuring. Not long after I moved away from the area, aged eleven, they levelled it and built an old people's home there instead. They call it progress.

Two fields down the road that I only vaguely remember have now become a primary school and, I think, a graveyard. I never called these fields mine as a child, but if I'd lived a little closer to them I would have done – and now they're gone too. I guess things like that are necessary, but every little “community building project” is another few people's childhoods slipping away…

The Waterfight

Perhaps the most vivid childhood memory I have is the waterfight. We must have been about six or seven, a boiling hot day in the middle of our long summer holidays… An old man walked past as we were squirting each other with water pistols, complaining that we shouldn't be wasting water when there was a hosepipe ban on. We squirted him too. I don't think he was impressed.

Time wore on, and the battle became more serious. At the end I was inside our garden, standing on the lid of the wheelie bin so that I could see over the wall and fire my water pistol down at David and James below. Sadly this didn't quite have the tactical advantage I'd hoped for, so I brought out the big guns – or in this case, the hosepipe. I claim that waterfight as my victory although perhaps it wasn't, for at that point my parents noticed what I was up to and ordered me inside while David and James continued to play…

Tread Softly, for you Tread on my Wasps

(I wonder how different the world of poetry would be if Yeats had been as weird as me…)

On another hot summer day, probably an earlier summer than that waterfight, the house was full of the smell of sugar from the pan of jam bubbling away on the cooker. Enticing for humans, and sadly also for the wasps that made their way in through the keyhole in our back door. My mum had spent some time swatting them and piling their bodies by the door before she had the good idea to stick sellotape over the keyhole, so we had our own personal wasp mortuary. Sadly, at the time, I didn't quite grasp that you could still get stung by a wasp even after it was dead, and even more bizarrely I also didn't grasp that standing on a pile of wasps was a bit, well, weird.

Twenty minutes and a trip to the pharmacist for some antihistamine later, I was feeling very sorry for myself…

Down To The River

The place I remember most from my childhood was the river. I recall it in every detail, in every season, we went there so many times… Over the logs and across the orange gravel car park, down the path between picnic benches or across the grass, down the steps and across more gravel until you got to the riverbank where I paddled in red Wellingtons and my parents warned me not to go too deep, where the dogs paddled and shook themselves dry, and where the two swans nested year after year.

Then along the path or the muddy bridleway alongside the river, past the jetties where grumpy fishermen sat or sometimes you could catch minnows in a net when the fishermen weren't there. At the end of the path you could carry on along the grassy bit of the bank or head up towards the road, from where you could turn left up the steep steps with the handrail in the middle, or… turn right…

Bronze Lake

I can't remember, now, whether that right turn really did exist, or even if it still does. If it did, then what I'm about to say really happened. If not, then this is almost certainly the first time I had a dream that I was unable to distinguish from reality.

It was a clear Spring evening following a damp morning, the first time I turned right at the end of the path along the riverbank. The path, although it didn't deserve the name, was in equal parts grass, mud and water. Some puddles were deep enough that water spilled in over the top of my Wellingtons, and most were so thick with mud that you could hardly tell them from the surrounding traversable ground. I'd gone this way while my parents waited by the steps – they discouraged me, of course, but there are times in one's life when the desire for adventure, however small, is unquenchable.

I headed over towards the trees on the left of the path, as the ground was more solid there, and kept walking for a few minutes until, away amongst the tall trunks to my left, I saw a lake shining bronze in the evening sun. I felt proud and special to have found this place, a place of serene beauty that most people never even knew existed.

After a few minutes I moved onwards, until my passage was stopped by a waterlogged field, flooded by the spring rainfall making its way downriver. I headed back slowly to my parents, and we went home.

I think one day, many years later, I did go back there, and discovered houses had been built where I remembered the pond being. Of course, that might have been a dream as well. Dreams and reality are intertwined in my mind at the best of times, but years' distance does nothing but hinder the distinction. Maybe I should go back again, and find out for sure what became of the place, and whether it was even real. Or maybe I shouldn't, maybe I should stick with just the beautiful, wonderful memory I have – just in case it was all a dream after all.

Blackberries and Autumn Scarves

Near to the river, there's a place where you could turn off to the left, I think, and walk down an avenue with blackberry bushes down one side. We went there a few times, in early autumn time, to pick blackberries and eat them or save them for a pie, and trample the first of the season's fresh brown leaves underfoot.

The Old Mill

Throop Mill has been abandoned for as long as I remember, and probably for a much longer time than that. Once, no doubt, an industrious place where flour was ground; now it's just an old red-brick building that's on its way to slowly falling into the water below.
There may once have been an open day there, but that might have been at Christchurch mill instead. Either way, I don't think it ever opens anymore. There's just the path around the side, past the sluice gates that long since rusted shut, across the grass and over the big bridge with the diagonal sluice gates that cry out to be kayaked down, and onwards to the vast fields beyond…

I went back there not so long ago, at night. They put up a new handrail alongside the rusty sluices, so there isn't a six-foot drop there anymore. But apart from that, nothing's changed. It's still familiar to me, even in the dark. With the passing years, only the painted sign on the wall announcing the building's former purpose fading slowly into the brickwork.

We used to visit the mill a lot; walking or cycling there along a stony lane which feels like the cycling equivalent of a rally track. I once made the mistake of braking with my front wheel first on unstable, damp ground, and ended up being propelled unceremoniously forward over the handlebars.

And, near the end of the track, there's a farmhouse with a blue roof behind a gate bearing the sign “This is NOT Blue Roof Farm”. I still have no idea where Blue Roof Farm actually is, nor even if it has a blue roof. It'd be nicely ironic if it didn't.

Holdenhurst and Hurn

Beyond the mill, beyond the bridge, beyond the fields that I once thought might stretch forever, there is a muddy track that's impassable for the non-Wellington- or bicycle-endowed for most of Spring and Autumn, and a bridge over what appears to be a lake. As far as I can tell, though, no river feeds this lake and none draws from it – it's just a huge, permanent puddle. I think there might be fish in there, but I've never caught one if there are.

Beyond there, mud turns to path and path turns to road, winding through Holdernhurst village and on to Hurn where the airport they now call “Bournemouth International” is. After cycling all the way there, we used to stop and have a drink and a snack in the cafe there. I don't think it's as inviting a place as it once was, now.

Election Fever

The first general election that I remember must have been the 1992 one, about the time I was turning seven, although I think I remember John Major becoming PM so presumably I had some knowledge of politics before that. My mum, dad and I cycled down the lane lined with cabbage fields to the church right at the end. I think the Labour party's campaign slogan was something like “It's time for change,” and I'm fairly sure my bright-red bike bore a piece of A4 paper on which was written something based on that slogan, getting as close to saying something insulting about Neil Kinnock as my seven-year-old mind knew how. I guess I never have been a fan of the Labour party. These days though, I can't think of anything to say about Blair that hasn't already been said…

A Fanboy is Born

I must confess that, during my early childhood, I had somewhat of an obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine. One particular event, which I think my mother secretly enjoys reminding me of, was a morning at church when (while wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine jumper, knitted by someone I think) I refused to respond to being called “Ian”, and insisted I be called “Thomas” instead.

On a similar theme, my mum once (I must have been about three or four) helped me record the theme music for the show on a clunky brown Fisher-Price tape recorder. I thought we were recording the whole episode though, so I was upset that only the title sequence got recorded. I guess I didn't really quite understand about tape recorders, then…

Humour Prototype

One thing I don't remember first-hand but get reminded of by my mother occasionally (it's always the embarassing stuff, isn't it?) was one day at nursery school, after they'd been teaching us the names of shapes, we were asked to demonstrate our knowledge to the parents who arrived to pick us up. I'm told that, even though I knew the correct names, I deliberately got them as wrong as possible to make the point that the task was so simple. I make that my first attempt at sarcasm, a trait that I'm sure is genetic (thanks dad).

Embarrassments at Swimming Pools

As soon as one embarassing thing comes to mind, more seem to shuffle in subtly and demand to be written about. Well, here goes two more embarassments, both at Stokewood Road swimming pool, and both involving swimming trunks – or lack of.

During my first week at St Martin's primary school, I was entirely unprepared for them having swimming lessons. I couldn't swim very well at that point, but that wasn't the worst of my problems – I had no trunks, either. Unfortunately I decided that the proper approach to this problem was to go swimming in my underwear instead. Needless to say, as soon as I entered the pool, the reasons why swimming trunks are not made of cotton became abundantly clear. My error of judgement was, sadly, quite obvious to everyone else around the pool at the time.
The second – perhaps worse – embarassment must have been only a few years later, when my absent-mindedness resulted in me forgetting to put my trunks on at all, and thus I turned up at the poolside entirely naked, no doubt to the shock of the onlookers (a group which included my mother, who hastily ushered me back in the direction of the changing rooms).

The Dreaded “S” Word

For the first year and a bit of my school life, which started when I was four, I went to a school that I remember very little about. In the first year there I remember some kind of brightly coloured play apparatus in a corner and, next to it, a computer running some kind of “educational” program that today's four-year-olds would probably shun for its poor graphics. The class was split into groups, each named after an item of clothing – allegedly they were chosen randomly, but according to my mother there was something of a correlation between a child's intelligence and the height at which their group's item of clothing is worn. Usually worn, anyway. If I'd thought then like I do now, I'd have come into school one day wearing hats on my feet and with my socks tied around my ears.

Lessons I Learned

I don't remember an awful lot of my lessons at that first primary school – or even, for that matter, if we even had rigidly-defined lessons. Still, there's some things I do recall.

At one point my dad showed me another way of writing the number eight – as two separate circles rather than the usual crossed loop. I tried it out one day in what passed for a maths lesson, and I got told to do the questions again on a new sheet of paper, “drawing my eights properly”. I guess this was probably the first time I was punished by someone other than my parents.

There was the day we were taught about syllables, too. We were asked to think about how many syllables were in our name then, one by one, stand in groups according to that number. I guess I didn't really understand the concept that well, and I couldn't work out how I could have a three-letter name with two syllables while others had names of five or six letters but only one syllable.

Before I really knew about punctuation, we were asked to write something – I can't remember what, but I remember it was about trains (at least, mine was). Rather than the punctuation that the rest of the world (but only a small fraction of the internet) uses, I drew what were supposed to be railway buffers between each sentence. Some of our work, mine included, was displayed on the wall for some time. It was still there when we were actually taught what a full stop was, and I remember being faintly embarrassed that my pre-punctuation work was still on display.

Year One Sports Day

I'm not sure if I actually remember this, or whether I've just been told. Either way it seems that, while in a race on Sports Day, I was second-to-last while my friend Kevin was last. Just before the finish line, I stopped to let him catch up before I finished. I assume he has forgotten, but in any case it's far too random and embarassing a subject to bring up on the occasions on which I bump into him. I believe he's now reading Maths at Oxford, or some equally scary degree.

Changing Schools

My time at that school was over within a year and three months. On a bleak December day, my mother and I walked to the school early. I played with boards and little coloured pegs that you could place in them to make patterns (I seem to recall making the Italian flag) while my mother talked at length with the teacher of my class. I didn't realise it then, but their subject was my forthcoming change of school.

In January, at the start of the Spring term, I attended another primary school (and this one I stuck with until the end). I remember going into the headmater's office before school the first day to be asked some questions and asked to kick a ball across the room – presumably to find out which was my dominant foot. I was a bit confused, I think – I've always used both feet equally badly.

Before Geography

Curiously, the only time I remember injury from when I was young was nothing much at all – just a graze on my right knee from the cold, hard and unforgiving playground. I wonder, now, what I was doing at the time to cause such an accident – I don't remember anyone else being there, except for the teacher on playground duty who cleaned up the cut with what felt like 10-molar hydrochloric acid but was probably only Savlon. Still – plastered up, limping and with one knee feeling like it was on fire – I made my way back to my classroom halfway through a geography lesson, where I was mightily embarassed to inform the teacher why I was late. I was in year three then, and it was Autumn, so I suppose I would have been six years old. It was probably the first time I'd ever been late for a lesson.

Although, that said, I do remember one day in year two, trying to feign illness so hard that I actually started feeling ill. It was a Tuesday afternoon – P.E. afternoon. Thus proving, I think, that at no point in my school life did I *ever* like P.E.

The Teachers That Left

Although the people who taught us at primary school were notable for many things, the most truly remarkable attribute of them all collectively was how many of them left the school permanently after spending a year teaching our class.

Our year 2 teacher, whom I now can't remember anything about, left after teaching us, as I think did our year 3 teacher, and our year 4 teacher who – mostly by virtue of giving us chocolate as a reward in French tests – I am convinced was the most awesome teacher ever. I don't remember us being a particularly troublesome class, so maybe it was just coincidence. And presumably nothing on the level of the A-level biology teacher's mental breakdown…

In fact, the only teacher we had that didn't leave seems to have been the year 5 and 6 teacher, who probably had more at stake seeing as he was the headmaster's son.

Science or Cooking?

The aforementioned headmaster only, if I recall, taught science (and science was only studied in years 5 and 6). We only ever did one practical – in the staff room, which for some obscure reason was fitted with gas taps for bunsen burners – and it was very simple. We heated sugar, and made caramel. Which we ate, or in my case didn't. Right at the best moment in the caramelisation, I'd gone to turn the bunsen off, and accidentally turned it on full blast instead. By the time I'd turned the gas tap back the other way, the caramel was burned.

The headmaster, by the way, rejoiced in the magnificent name of “Townley Shenton” – or “Sir” to us, the only teacher we weren't told to refer to with his actual name. I believe he passed away some years ago, and I suspect that if the school is still running then it is now headed by his son.

The Wrong Desk
Punishments
Half-remembered Holidays (Wales)
Electric Shock Therapy (Cornwall)
Left-Hand Drive (Denmark)
Steamships and Ice Cream (Switzerland)
The Impossible Shot (Germany)