I remember # 1

Fog on a football field, from https://flic.kr/p/5pA9EW
Fog on a football field, from https://flic.kr/p/5pA9EW

1. I remember thinking there was nothing more beautiful than fog on a football field.

2. I remember cuckoo spit.

3. I remember being frightened of Wass Water in the Lake District because the water was so dark and deep.

4. I remember wearing garters to hold up my socks.

5. I remember Nina Baden Semper.

6. I remember skimming stones.

7. I remember ‘Jesamine’ by The Casuals.

8. I remember the first book I ever read to myself, a book of mountaineers. I liked the story of Edmund Whymper and the Matterhorn especially.

9. I remember my first French lessons and wondering if all those in France thought in English but had to translate everything into this other language.

10. I remember Pussy Cat Willum.

11. I remember steam trains.

12. I remember Jamboree bags.

13. I remember the Galloping Gourmet.

14. I remember nearly drowning after diving under the cover of a swimming pool.

15. I remember the Common Market.

16. I remember reading Coral Island, and years later Lord of the Flies, which inverts the whole premise of  R.M. Ballantyne’s novel of another age.

17. I remember the children’s singalongs at Saturday morning cinema.

18. I remember Sunday School.

19. I remember being held up to listen to the ticking of a watch.

20. I remember the Beatles breaking up.

21. I remember my grandmother, but only just the one time, meeting her in the street in Tunbridge Wells when quite young. Five years’ acquaintance, and only the one memory.

22. I remember the deep shock the first time I was stung by a bee.

23. I remember Jack Frost on the windows.

24. I remember the Love Bug.

25. I remember reading a football magazine profile of Jimmy Greaves  which said he played for Chelsea and Spurs and wondering which he would choose to play for whenever the two sides might meet.

26. I remember a family holiday in Spain and being told that a famous and quite mad artist (Dali) lived near by and being both puzzled and impressed by this.

27. I remember Clodagh Rodgers.

28. I remember putting a penny in the slot of a machine in a seaside arcade to see a bear drinking from a glass of beer.

29. I remember I’m a mole, I’m a mole, and I live in a hole.

30. I remember bob-a-job.

 

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3 thoughts on “I remember # 1

  1. Did you have my childhood Luke????! What a look back way into the mists; Pussy Cat Willum though, it’s a faintly familiar name but what is he? Apart from a cat I suppose. I remember being baffled by Sunday School, feeling sick at the smell of Sunday roast, Orlando the Marmalade Cat, Topsy and Tim, the sight of my secondary school on the first day. Brilliant post

  2. Pussy Cat Willum was a glove puppet that featured in Small Time, a children’s programme hosted by Wally Whyton, whose albums of children’s songs I grew up to.

    This is the start of an occasional series, with acknowledgments naturally to Georges Perec for the original ‘Je me souviens’ idea and to Gilbert Adair for his ‘I remember’ homage to Perec, in his book Myths and Memories.

    1. I should note that the I Remember idea was originally that of the American artist and writer Joe Brainard

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