Video transcript
The Museum find that triggered my thoughts was, a little girl in the picture Blackberrying
by Harold Harvey. She is totally engrossed in the berries and flowers in front of her
while the timeless, unhurried, West country view stretches far away around her.
In 1963, in Chagford, Devon, my dad left our family. My mum needed a way of earning
enough money to keep her family together, so she went to train as a teacher in
Exmouth.
We went to live with the Lyons family. My sister was old enough to go to school every
day and my brother was a poorly baby in a pram. So I spent long, peaceful days in the
garden, by myself.
To my four year old eyes the beautiful plants towered high around the garden. To one
side was a magic rockery that seemed to climb like a rocky outcrop above me. I would
gather up the flowers and fallen petals and tiny stones and make fairy scenes along the
ledges, like little rooms in a fairy palace.
Once I turned five, I started at the village school. My main memory is of long, sunny
afternoons on a patch of earth at the back of the school, digging with spades, happy
hours finding china treasure. Filling my pockets with beautiful pieces of broken pot, I
loved studying the snippets of patterns and pictures. The pieces would all be stored
away in old chocolate boxes, to be got out for browsing through on wet rainy days.
Eventually we joined my mum in Exmouth and we finally became our tight knit, self-
sufficient family. Now the digging happened on the beach, where I added beautiful
pebbles and shells to my collections.
This time and its memories have never left me, they've stayed deep down inside me,
making me slow and pensive, self-contained and easily pleased. My house is still
dotted with pieces of broken china and shells collected over the years.
And, to this day, I trawl beaches and rocky places for treasure and I still get excited at
the allotment, when a beautiful piece of china, pops out of the ground.
I agree - it's the tiny things that bring back childhood memories. For me it's buttons and I also remember the broken pottery. We called it 'boody' in the North East.Posted on 10/11/2009 at 08:40:04