Random Memories - An Entry for Spiderkid's Great British Write Off!

I was born in England and lived there until the age of 12, then my family moved to Canada. It was a difficult age to be completely uprooted: just entering puberty, a shy, withdrawn child that hated being different. I made an effort to change my accent so I wouldn't be noticed and would fit in with the crowd. Many difficult years followed but now, almost 30 years after leaving England I have finally come to know who I am, be self-confident and not afraid of being different. People tell me all the time I'm very British and I love to hear that. Never having had the opportunity to visit my homeland, the memories are fading. I remember place names, I can see pictures in my head but it becomes increasingly difficult to match them together. I would love to spend a few months there, revisiting many places and seeing others I never had the chance to when young. I know in some ways I have romanticized Britain, I have the memories of an innocent child, I never really saw the harsh realities that exist in every country of the world. Part of me says don't visit there for it will destroy those notions but another part of me, the stronger part, says I must see it again, I must feel that connection to a place that will always be home. Don't get me wrong, I love Canada and am proud to live here but there's always something indefinable in the background. I've met many people over the years that no longer live in the country of their birth and almost always we have this in common. Some call it a sense of having roots but that isn't quite accurate, some may define it as belonging, but again, not exactly correct. If you've experienced it, you know what it is. There really isn't a point to this, it is merely a rambling stroll through the memories I hold so dear.

One of my earliest memories is going in to see my mother after she had given birth to my younger brother at home. I was a couple of months shy of three at the time and it's just a fleeting memory, more of an impression than anything else. Many years later, my mother told me the next day it was discovered my older sister and I had the chicken pox so no one could visit the house and my mother could not leave for weeks. I can't imagine what that was like for her, with a newborn and two other young children.

My parents had an old style wringer-washer, the kind with the wringer above the washer to squeeze the clothes through. One day my mother swung the wringer part too fast and broke the kitchen window.

At one point we moved to a new neighbourhood and a block away was a junk yard. My friends and I would climb the fence and play among the old cars, never once thinking of the danger. If the owner heard us and came out shouting we would run, scrambling over the fence, terrified and laughing at the same time.

My best friend Linny (Belinda) had a black lab dog. I loved animals and would go over there to play with him in their yard even when no one was home. Linny and I would take him for walks, playing hide and seek with him.

Fish and chips in newspaper, malt vinegar and HP sauce on my chips, please. Milk delivered to our front door in glass bottles. On the rare occasion we got the gold top which had cream on the top and was saved for a special dessert that night. The music of the ice cream van that sold cornets. Not knowing peanut butter even existed until we moved overseas.

Watching Doctor Who and laughing at my older sister as she hid behind the couch whenever the Daleks or the Cybermen came on screen. Mooning over David Cassidy and feeling disdain for those who preferred Donny Osmond. Seeing ABBA win the Eurovision song contest. The Wombles, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, Blue Peter, Top of the Pops, Hammy Hamster, Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, The Carry On Gang, Benny Hill.

My father was an avid camper and hiker (years later my mother told me I had been conceived in a tent, no wonder I still love camping to this day!) Our holidays almost always consisted of going camping and hiking somewhere. We didn't own a car and so would hike from place to place carrying everything on our backs. My father taught us how to read a map and a compass. The family joke was that we could never get lost because no matter where we were, my father could find a pub. He sometimes let me sip a little of the foam off his beer. I remember camping in the Lake District, hiking the Pennine Way, another time hiking through a fog so thick my father connected us all together with a rope so no one would go astray (my older sister was so afraid at the time I remember her tears.) We hiked through part of Wales once and I remember one road so steep there was a bench halfway up to rest on. There was a regular bridle path we would hike often on the weekends, I vividly recall the blackberry bush at one point of it and eating them until I felt sick. Climbing over stiles, smashing my finger in a farm gate, my father catching the Coleman Stove on fire when he was trying to light it once, asking a farmer if we could camp in one of his fields, the scrambled eggs made from a powder and water mixed together. One holiday we rented a caravan on a dairy farm for a couple of weeks. I was in my element and would climb onto the backs of the cows in the field. My favourite pair of trousers at the time were bright pink. Of course I slipped in the cow shed and my mother had to throw them away, I remember my tears. One cow had horns so I automatically assumed it to be a bull and named it Bully. It was not until years later I realized it had to have been a cow or would have been segregated from the females. Those were all magical times for me.

Going to visit my maternal grandparents in New Milton. Part of the journey was through the New Forest and I loved catching glimpses of the wild ponies there. Scent is the sense most strongly attached to memory and still to this day whenever I smell mint I am transported to my grandmother's kitchen where she grew mint on the windowsill. In her garden she grew gooseberries, ugh how I hated them! While visiting her we would walk to the beach where there were houses perched so close to the cliff edge I wondered how many years it would be before erosion caused them to topple over.

I remember that day, driving away in a taxi from my grandparent's house, my mother in a rare display of emotion as we drove toward the airport and a new life in Canada.

Some say we can't go home again but through these memories I am there in an instant.

My sincere thanks to Tom for hosting this and allowing me to indulge myself for a little while. Please join in here.