A few childhood memories

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I've enjoyed reading about the childhood experiences and memories of our fellow myLotters. Were things really so different and so innocent then, or is this just how we choose to remember them? A bit of both, perhaps. Electronics and a change of hemispheres aside, I don't think there's a lot of difference between my own childhood and the one which young Dom will remember in years to come. The world is still a small and intimate place when you're young and the things which really matter don't change much. I grew up in a small seaside village in the north of England. Winters were harsh and white there and the school and roads were sometimes closed by snow. We lived on a hill which was ideal for sled rides and ice slides. In the summer and autumn, the fields close by grew tall hay. The local kids trampled mazes into the crop and then when it was cut and baled, built forts out of the massive bricks. I remember two or three things about my grandma who lived at the top of the hill. Her house always smelled of fresh baking, and she had an amazing collection of transparencies from her travels all over the world. She'd been to the Holy Land and Russia, South America and Australia, somewhere new every year since my grandpa had died. It was always her intention to leave this collection to me but my Aunt threw them all out when she was tidying up the estate. If there is one big difference between my childhood and Dom's, it is that the world seemed safer then. My parents were happy to let us spend the whole day exploring local denes and woodlands, or searching for half-buried lookout bunkers along the cliff tops. I wouldn't allow my own boy such freedom these days. I don't remember much about my youngest sister who died when she was eight and I was ten. But I do remember that on the day she died I was picked up from school by my grandma and that as we neared home a neighbor was just leaving. The poor woman obviously had no idea what to say so she blurted out something about her boy Graham having been to the dentist's that day. I told her I felt sorry for him. After Carolyn died, things went sour with my mother's parents and the family decided to move to the other side of the world. The change of scenery was taken in stride by me and my sister but for days my mum fretted about having made a terrible mistake. She's been back to England many times since, but my dad never did. I feel the same way about Australia. My earliest clear memory is of Winston Churchill's state funeral. This always struck me as weird but a few years ago I found out that it had happened on my fourth birthday. Maybe not being the center of attention that day had lodged itself in a secret corner of my mind.