No 38.

Remember when you were young?
You shone like the sun.
Song: Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Album: Wish You Were Here

For this lyric I was going to write about how we seem to shine much more brightly when we are young than we do as we get older but I couldn't work out what I wanted to say so instead I'm going to talk about memories of when we were young. Specifically earliest memories.

I don't have a specific memory that I can point to and say that's my earliest but I can remember the house that we moved out of when I was four and a half so that's got to be up there among the earliest. I don't remember that much about the garden or the downstairs but the upstairs was a different matter.

It was a two-bedroom house and the room I shared with my brother (there were only two of us at that stage) was at the front. It seemed huge at the time, although I know now that it wasn’t that big, with two beds sticking out from one wall and the toy chest in the corner. If I remember correctly (and this is a little hazy) we used to play on the floor between my bed and the wall.

The impressions I have of my parents' room are primarily of darkness. I only ever saw it in the morning, when my Mum was still in bed (back in the days when she could quite happily sleep until mid-morning if she was allowed to) and the curtains were drawn. Because of that, going in there always made me uneasy.

There are a few other memories from around that time as well, just fragments really but things that stuck in my mind. Like my last day at the local playgroup before going to nursery school or the morning my brother smashed my cereal bowl because he was trying to wear it as a hat. I even remember going to see the house that we later moved into (and in which my parents still live). That was a grand adventure, walking all that way (about half a mile) to have a look at a strange house. Funny though, I don't remember actually moving at all.

What's your earliest memory?