I have a memory from when I was two … of visiting my Welsh grandparents and needing to sleep and them having no cot, so them pulling out a drawer from a big dresser and making it up with blankets for me . And also attending a wedding and trying to pull away from my mother because I wanted to explore. Both were confirmed as being in 1960 . After that my memories are just sunny happy days playing with my pet tortoise, annoying my brother and sister because I was the youngest and bossiest, family get-togethers with my mother’s large Italian family. In fact, when I have any need to be calm or meditate (dentist visits, stuff like that) it’s always that picture that I go back to in my head.
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oh, and school dinners … I loved loved loved semolina and used to ask the school cook for the skin and the unstirred bits. I called them ‘unexploded lumps’ as you bit into them and got the powdery semolina. Everybody else hated them. As I was a Catholic in a Protestant school, I was excused meat on a Friday and had fishfingers prepared especially for me and a dozen other Catholic kids. Well fishfingers were currency in that school, everyone wanted them, so if it coincided with a semolina day then I could exchange one for a plate of semolina and seconds. Still love semolina and still make it occasionally, taking care not to stir too carefully in order to preserve the ‘unexploded lumps’ … bliss!
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I was also bullied at primary school because I had eczema and my sister had learning difficulties.
The playground supervisor just said to avoid the bullies.
She obviously did not think that they had legs to follow me.
I hated that school too.
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My granddad became ill soon after he retired and ended up on bed rest. I became convinced that people who retired went to bed! I remember watching my Dad shave Granddad and thinking ’ I don’t want my daddy to retire I don’t want him to have to stay in bed all the time ’ I would have been three
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Oh dear… sad memories then Jane… were you later school years any better ?? 
@Stella Are you thinking of Ask the Family rather than University Challenge (which is still going strong)? Even if things were easier then your brother would have had to be exceptional to answer many questions aged 9 as they are aimed at University student level knowledge.
Nope… it was University Challenge… and, yes, he was exceptional…
We had books everywhere…of all sorts and types… including the the Arthur Mee’s 10 volumes Children’s Encyclopedia (which were a wonderful source of knowledge)… we could all read and write well before we went to school…
… my brother only had to read something once… and it was there in his brain for life…
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[quote=“Sandy_Hewlett, post:22, topic:22523, full:true”] Well fishfingers were currency in that school, everyone wanted them, so if it coincided with a semolina day then I could exchange one for a plate of semolina and seconds.
[/quote]
Your true vocation was surely as a ‘Masters of the Universe’ Gordon Gekko-style trader on the floor of the Wall Street stock-exchange, raking in zillions from off-setting fish-finger futures against semolina puddings. Pure genius, Sandy!
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My first memories are of the house I was born in…at home…my younger sister was also born there and we left when I was about 3 and she was 1…
I had an inexplicable fear of the chimney pot…playing in the back garden and learning to ride my bike with the red and white wheels whilst my dad offered encouragement… I would stand on the path in the garden and stare at the chimney pot with such a feeling of dread that I still recall it vividly today…
Our next door neighbours son went on to become a famous actor…I remember his rabbit called napoleon…x 
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Ok, I am going to say something so controversial that I expect to be banned from this forum, but…I really hate rice pudding /ducks
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My second daughter arrived a month early express delivery on Mother’s Day at my mom and dad’s when I was delivering flowers to my mom…x
Obviously totally unexpected but whilst my mom delivered her my dad pulled out a drawer emptied it and made a makeshift cot for her…my first born daughter vividly remembers being taken up the garden in her dad’s arms and crying because she wanted to be with me and see her sister being born…she was two…x
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Oh no! Just when the forum had settled back down into harmony, peace, the sound of willow on leather, and harmless and soporific topics like childhood memories of elderly spinsters cycling to matins through the mist have returned to soothe the savage breast, brazen and unashamed rice-pudding-phobia and naked duck-ism raise their ugly heads!
I don’t believe it! It’s time to bring back the birch and the stocks. Flog 'em and flag ’ em, hanging’s too good for them etc. Bring back Richard Dimbleby to restore some sort of order, say I. 
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Me too, and camembert, and of course, the devils food, courgettes 
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Nothing personal, Nelli, you are obviously a fine example of the flowering of Olde England’s best tradition of dissent against pallid puddings and drearily quacking pond-pest nuisances with their ugly feet and insolent bobbing-up-and-down mannerisms. A modern re-incarnation of the spirit of Mrs Pankhurst and our saintly Maggie the Thatch, of blessed memory 
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And I’m lactose intolerant so boo to rice pud
I’m in a bit of a nostalgic haze at the moment … not childhood but from twenty years ago. We’ve just bought a cheap ‘Video Grabber’ from Lidl which can plug into your old camcorders, video recorders, etc., and convert them into digital format. So I got the old camcorder tapes from the loft and played them (after, I confess, about two hours of how to work the flippin’ conversion software … not easy, but worked in the end!) and sat back to see what was on them.
It’s 1998 and me and Mr. H. are travelling to our holiday cottage in the Creuse which we’d bought two years earlier. When we arrive the house is in chaos as there were electric and plumbing works going on but there’s so much laughter on this tape as we’re wading through the rubble and dust. It’s a shock to see us both so much younger - Mr. H. said “I have hair!!” - and to hear us chatting away and laughing as we put away the shopping, (there was so much beer! - neither of us drink alcohol these days so I’m surprised to see two bags of beer and wine), welcome some friends who arrive (one of whom died the following year … and it’s clear now from the video that she was unwell although we didn’t realise at the time). Part of me looks at it dispassionately, interested in the scenery and the furniture we used to have and the clothes I used to wear, and another part of me aches for that youth and sense of adventure as I feel fairly ‘been there, done that’ about a lot of things these days. Anyway I have a whole box of these and no real idea what’s in them so today will be an enjoyable nostalgia-fest watching them and getting them digitised. If anyone’s interestdd the kit was about 20euros and it’s currently on sale at Lidl.
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Not really, because I have said in other posts my dad died when I was thirteen and I was left with my adopted mother and her natural child, who I now know to have been autistic, although at the time I just had to keep making allowances for her.
No child beteavement charities then or people who understood how difficult it is having an autistic child gor a sibling.
Happy now, apart from Brexit of course.
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Me and my big beak and big webbed feet! 
Sorry again, Nelli, but curious to know why you don’t like duck. Is that roast duck or walking/quacking duck? I’m none-too-keen on roast duck myself, it’s just a touch too greasy for my palate. But you don’t have to say anything, it’s just my curiosity twitched. 
I got chased by a Muscovy duck called Sekhmet once. Was never the same after that 
Research on Google on how to manage naughty Muscovy ducks suggests that the victim of a bad-tempered peck should grasp the aggressor’s beak firmly in the closed fist and say “No!” (i. e. In your case “No, Sekhmet!”) using an authoritative tone of voice.
I wonder if you have tried this tactic, Nelli, and what result it produced? 
