h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When Cactuscafe said ‘Time is a strange event’, it set me thinking. I see time more like a river, nibbling away the present and carrying pieces into memory. Among those memories are pleasant times and difficult ones, although the way we remember events depends on our point of view and our state of mind. Ask two members of the same family to remember an event, and you will get conflicting accounts. So what events come to my mind as I think back? Two of the key events in my childhood memories are moves, and here is a poem about them.

MOVING

My earliest memory is moving home –
a new laid house deposited in mud.
We huddled in plastic macs, drank tea
from thermoses – trippers on a wet weekend.
Our rooms impersonal, our belongings slung
on a careless lorry somewhere on the road.

Next move, we travelled southward
in snow. Found a house made gloomy
by blue windows, bleary paper,
garage ramshackle as storm damage.
We walked an unfamiliar route to town
found it over long. My brothers
stayed behind to face uncertain
future in furnished rooms.

Very evocative and poignant indeed - I can really visualise "a new laid house deposited in mud"...

Thanks.

Nice poem, MVP.

Thanks.

Love that poem!

Time as a river, nibbling away the present and carrying pieces into memory. mmmm, that's an amazing image.

'Tis true, the way we remember events depends on our point of view and state of mind.

And then there's exaggeration. My gran used to exaggerate wildly, her memories got wilder and wilder, the older she got.

I guess we naturally express our own story.

So you did a lot of moving in childhood. hmmm

We didn't move at all in childhood, my Dad was very rooted on his farm, although my mother desperately wanted to move, but never did. She dreamed of trains and ships, and suitcases all packed and ready to go.