Memories are funny things.
One of the first memories I have is walking into my Grandma's house in Southampton and looking at the Grandfather clock, she kept just inside the door. Watching the pendulum swing back and forth. I must have been about two years old.
The next clear memories I have are on board the Fairstar, on our way out to Australia in 1972. I have quite a few memories of the ship. I remember the dining room. The children would eat dinner first and the adults later in the evening. I remember having a luke warm cup of tea with a biscuit. I remember being told off by the cabin boy for making too much noise one day and I remember playing quoits on deck. I was 2 1/2 years old.
How do memories work? What makes our brain retain a certain piece of seemingly unimportant information? Why do we remember an event that happened decades ago better than events last week?
I have good memories about certain times in the past and certain periods in my life and sometimes wish things were the same as back in the "good old days". But when I really stop and think and remember back to those times. I remember they weren't as rosy as my mind tries to paint them.
It is a good thing, isn't it, that my brain remembers the good points about a time and not the bad. In twenty years or more will I look back on today and think "remember how wonderful things were in 2012"!
What is one of your first memories and how old were you at the time?
Melanie
