When I Was A Child, I Caught A Fleeting Glimpse... (Childhood Memories)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Childhood Memories
Date:	26/08/03 (259 review reads)
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I spent my first eleven years of life living in a three-storey Victorian terraced house in the West End of Lincoln. We lived in a cul-de-sac next to the West Common. My Dad used to get to work on a scooter in those days and I’d meet him at the end of the road and get to ride on the back up to our house.

A lot of my social life would revolve round the Common. Every Bonfire Night, Dad would take me there for the usual fireworks and mushy peas and I would look out for all my mates there. Then in Winter when it snowed, we’d sledge down the hill.

I seem to have most memories of my Mum at that time ironing. I seemed to have all the fun times with my Dad. At the weekends, we’d go out on our bikes and cycle along the cinder path to the ornamental pond at the far side. We’d often go over the road to the park and I’d go on the swings, seeing how high I could fly. We’d go home and Mum would still be ironing.

It was a quite tight little community. I remember several of the families who lived in my street, even now. Pictures of them are still frozen in my mind, the same age as they were then.

We were a good place to have street parties in the cul-de-sac. I remember we had one for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and the Royal Wedding in 1981. I can’t clearly define which one is which in my head, but we had dancing, music late into the night and tables of food along the street. We decorated everywhere with bunting in red, white and blue. Mum put posters up on our windows. When it was Charles and Di’s wedding, we had some people in our house watching it and I remember my Mum making a big fuss over Diana’s dress being creased.

My bedroom was big enough for me to do two cartwheels from the door to the windows. I had a big Wendy house, which was great fun during the day, but terrifying at night, when it seemed to become some kind of monster.

I had a red plastic
‘phone in the Wendy House, which was my Bat Phone. I’d ring up Batman, Robin, Batgirl and all the baddies and put the world to rights. I used to have a boyfriend list which seemed to change every few days, but Batman and Robin were constants – and we’re talking Adam West and Burt Ward here!

I used to have a little tape recorder and would tape the charts each week. We didn’t have one of those leads to put in or a radio/cassette recorder at first, so everyone had to be quiet while I was taping. I remember having several tapes where Mum said something and you can hear that, along with me going “Oh Mum!” in exasperated tones shortly after.

My favourite groups were Blondie and Abba when I first got into music around 1979-80. The first singles I bought were Geno by Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Too Much Too Young by The Specials. Others that I remember buying quite soon after were Eighth Day by Hazel O’Connor, Babooshka by Kate Bush and The Tide Is High by Blondie.

I collected Enid Blyton books as a child and ended up with over eighty. I loved the Malory Towers books and always longed to go to boarding school myself. I also loved Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield and the Doctor Who Target novels, which my Dad would read to me at night. As I only knew the Doctor as Tom Baker, I always pictured him in the role. It was years later that I found out some of the books were from Jon Pertwee’s time or even earlier.

I got my Dr. Who obsession from my Dad, he was a huge fan and Saturdays revolved around the programme. We’d have the football results and Basil Brush beforehand. The Generation Game was a family favourite too – Larry Grayson and then Bruce Forsyth with the lovely Anthea, who had glamorous long dresses every week.

I loved Sapphire and Steel and The New Avengers and even had my hair cut in a ‘Purdey’ in 1977. Space 1999 was another favourite &#
8211; I wanted to be Catherine Schell’s Maia – and I loved Charlie’s Angels, especially in the Kate Jackson/Jaclyn Smith/Cheryl Ladd era.

Dad got me into Carry On films too. We got a Betamax VCR in 1980 and he started taping his favourites. I know we had quite a few on video – Regardless, Behind, Cleo and (my favourite) Abroad were definitely on tape. I also loved watching old Hollywood musicals on TV and disaster movies my Dad taped – Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Meteor, etc.

Mum worked through my childhood and at one point, she was waitressing in the evenings and Dad looked after me. He was a journalist then and one night, I remember he had to go and report on a fire and I had to get out of bed and go in the car with him.

Because both my parents worked, I spent school holidays at my Nan’s and Gran’s houses, which I lived. They would cook me my favourite meal, which was beef stew and dumplings (I didn’t become vegetarian until 1987) and I used to drink lots of Dandelion and Burdock. I used to cut out people from catalogues and play with them. The best ones were from my Gran’s big sewing patterns book, as they were drawings, not photos. I would give the dolls names and play with them for hours doing schools, beauty competitions, gymnastics tournaments and Brownies.

I was into gymnastics from the age of eight or so, maybe a bit younger. Just like my middle daughter now, I was always upside down, cartwheeling down the street, doing handstands against the wall or somersaulting across the settee.

One day, when I was about ten, I had just perfected a new skill – ‘go back to crab’ as I called it then. It’s when you stand up, then arch backwards until you put your hands on the floor in a bridge or crab. Well, I was keen to show my Mum so I told her to watch. I was in the dining room and she was in the long, narrow kitchen adjoining it, ironin
g (again). I went to do the move, but chickened out halfway down and landed on my head with a big thump. Dad was out at the Chinese and Mum had to ring him to get him home. What really annoyed me was that later on, I discovered she hadn’t even been watching!

We used to go on lots of family holidays – Mum, Dad and I. (I was an only child until 2000, when my Dad had a daughter by his second wife.) We had a red car for some of my childhood, I think it was a Vauxhall Viva. Later on, we had a Renault and a Morris Marina. I used to stretch out in the back seat and sleep. We didn’t have child seats and the back seat belts we have now.

Dad loves fairs and circuses and it turned into a bit of a joke that all our holidays seemed to be based around where a good circus or fair was going to be! We went to Blackpool a few times, Jersey, Oxford, the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, the toy museum in Bath, all over the place. I only seem to remember the dolls I bought at each place with most of them! We also went abroad a lot – France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg.

We hired a horse and caravan twice, for those holidays where you lived that kind of ‘gypsy’ life for a week or so. We have some old cine film of one of our holidays. Mum wore a headscarf, Dad still had straight hair (before he got it permed), I wore horrible tank tops and grotesque trousers.

We went to Butlin’s, Barry Island several years running in the 1980s. I loved that place. We met up with old friends year after year and always made new ones. I’d do the Pentathlon awards and gymnastics. One year, I was swimming in the shallow end with a friend and we decided to have a race. We went too far and I found I couldn’t put my legs on the floor and went under water. I was right near the side, so I got out okay, but I have been terrified since and hate it when my kids go swimming.

We moved house in 1982, so I could go to a better
secondary school than the one I’d have gone to in Lincoln. I lived there until I left home in 1988, to go to University. I had lots of friends over those six years and always seemed busy socially – going round friends’ houses, meeting people at the park, going to discos and parties, chatting to mates on the ‘phone. The village has changed so much now and all the fields we played in have now had houses built on them.

I got chickenpox in 1986 – the hottest summer for years! I had just come back from a holiday in Austria and Mum went down with it as soon as we got home. As most people know, chickenpox is worse the older you are – she was 40, I was 16. It was awful, I spent a lot of time having cold baths and covering myself in calamine lotion. It was Fergie and Andrew’s wedding the same time.

I had quite a few pets in childhood – a tortoise called Shaney (who hibernated and never woke up again), a goldfish called Chilly (who I won at the fair and it lived into its late teens!), a budgie, several cats and my beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniels – Lee Lee and Lady Olga.

My first kitten was a black and white half-Persian that I called Mitty. I originally called it Mitzi, until I found out it was a he! We had Mitty for years and he lived a long and happy life with us. One day, we got back home in the car and saw Mitty waiting in the driveway. He was obviously ill and seemed to have just been hanging on for us really. When we arrived, he let out a sad mewing sound, then died in front of us. It was very sad.

My Grandads died when I was small. I remember one being on my Gran’s settee, though that might have been my Great Gaggle (Great Grandad), I think. They died in the first few years of my life and my memories are rather hazy. My other Grandad was a lollipop man and used to play ‘one potato, two potatoes’ with me and looked like a teddy bear.

I was lucky n
ot to really suffer from bereavement as a child. My Nanna and Gran are still alive now, aged 96 and 86. I did have to deal with my Uncle’s death when I was a teenager though. He hung himself in the middle of my Aunt’s house and she walked in and found him. I can remember we got a ‘phonecall from my Gran and we couldn’t understand what she was saying at first. We went to my Aunt’s house and I shed one tear for him, before becoming angry. My Aunt has bad asthma and had already died once and been revived, so I was really cross that he could do that to her.

Another big event I will always remember happened in 1983. We were on holiday in our static caravan in Ingoldmells, near Skegness, when a policeman turned up at the door. We were told our house had been hit by lightning and had caught fire. We drove home not knowing what the damage was. In the end, we discovered there had been a fireball in the loft so everything in there was burned and our roof had to be replaced. It was very sad seeing my old annuals on the back garden, where they’d been thrown out of the loft during the fire. I was also upset seeing my set of teddy bears that went on our Christmas tree every year. It could have been much worse though. Our house smelt of burning for weeks and I still hate that smell.

Overall, my childhood was very good. I had two lovely parents (and still do), even if most of my memories of my Mum seem to involve her ironing! I went to the theatre a lot and met many famous people, which I loved. I had my own circus act when I was thirteen. I also got dragged to far too many fairs, circuses and vintage car museums and endured countless journeys on steam engines, just for my Dad!

I spent my childhood partly loving being an only child and partly hating it. On the plus side, I learned to enjoy my own company and make my own entertainment. I could have most things I wanted (although I didn’t feel I was spoilt) and go
t to do any amount of after-school activities – gymnastics, ballet, tap, Brownies, etc. I could always take a friend on holiday with me, if I wanted to and my toys and books survived so I could pass them on to my own kids.

I always wanted a sister though. My Mum miscarried a few years after I was born and couldn’t have any more children. My parents split up in 1997. Dad got remarried and my little sister will be three years old in September. Perhaps to compensate for being an only child myself, I have had four children – who now complain about their siblings constantly! Oh, the irony…

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