"what's your first memory?"

It’s clear I was a right little tearaway. 

In my very first memory of all I was in the kitchen at our little house at Beech Avenue. It was probably a Monday morning because Grandma was doing the washing, and I’m sure washing was only ever a Monday morning thing in those days.

I had run out of other things to do, so I was standing by the washing machine and wrapping a piece of white thread round and round the metal ‘Hoovermatic’ logo on the front of the machine. The thread was a bit tatty and beginning to fray, and I remember thinking that I was two years old and I wanted something exciting to happen. 

I clearly found it, because in another memory from around that time, I was standing on the corner of Beech Avenue, by the main Scartho Road. My mum was running towards me shouting. She got to me and scooped me up and carried me home. She was cross with me. I’d been playing in the drive of our house, and managed to open the gate, and I’d headed out along Beech Avenue to the wider world.

But I believe my greatest adventure of that early period happened Just afterwards. In May or early June that year we left Beech Avenue and went to live with my Nana and Grandpa in their house in Charles Avenue.

Their house was in the middle of Carris Avenue, at number 16. It was a very happy house and I liked being there. It stood out on the street because it had a yellow privet hedge, when everywhere else had green privet, or walls, or fences. 

We spent a couple of months there while our new house was being finished off. For a couple of weeks of that time, probably in June, my mum and dad went with Len and Sheila for a summer holiday to Barcelona, leaving me with Nana and Grandpa.

I used to play with the children down at the end of Carris Avenue, and so, one day, while I was out in the front garden of Nana and Grandpa’s house, I decided to go and see them. I let myself out the front gate, got on my little tricycle and pedalled off down the road to their house.

I went up their drive and knocked on the side door, and found they weren’t in, but a grownup at their house said they had gone to Farrow’s. This was interesting. Farrow’s was an exciting playground that we’d go for a treat. I knew it was a bit of a way (actually about a mile), but I didn’t have anything else to do that morning, so I decided to go off and find them there.I knew more or less how to get there, so I got back on my trike, and set off.

I went down Carris Avenue, turned left Hedge Avenue, turned right out onto Grampian Road, and started peddling. I went over the first junction, and the adventure truly began. 

I left home in the dust of my wheels, and toiled on, and on, ever close to Farrow’s Promised Land, far off in the distance. I peddled mightily and made steady progress. It seemed to me that hours passed. Many houses went past, I crossed many road junctions, got over Mill Road, and past the cemetery gates, and all went smoothly.

The day wore on and I was getting ever closer to Farrow’s. I was pretty excited about seeing my friends and playing on the slide and the swings. I had gone across Trinity Avenue and was closing in on St John’s Avenue. So, I had tricycled almost half a mile before being thwarted. I could almost hear my friends greeting me when I noticed a suspicious car coming towards me up Grampian Road. 

As I watched, it slowed down and stopped. The driver got out, smiling at me. I watched in horror as he crossed onto the pavement and walked towards me. 

It was my Grandpa. 

‘Oh-oh’, I thought. ‘Oh-oh.’ 

I tried to lug my trike round so I could turn and make my escape, but he came in so quickly I didn’t have time. He scooped me and the trike up, put the trike in the boot, me in the front seat next to him, and set off back to the house.

He told me Nana had realised I’d gone missing and called Grandpa. He’d left work, jumped in his car and driven back out towards the village to look for me.

I think he was more amused than anything else, but he did warn me that Nana was not pleased. He was right. She was definitely not pleased with me. Not pleased at all. In fact, it’s the only time I remember her ever being cross with me.

Having said that, given I was only just two, it was definitely a Great Adventure, and I do think it set the tone for some of my wanderings in France when I left school.