I remember the clouds of white from a place of joy. I still remember feeling safe and seeing those white sheets, blowing in the breeze on the washing line. I remember small fruit trees and, kneeling up and leaning over, the wooden frames boxed around them. I was put out there a lot, but could not move out of the pram, though I wanted to. When the survivor of my parents died, the photographs proved all these memories were real, though they had long sworn my memories were deep as I grew up.
Some days, I remember waving to the trees as I was carried from our cottage across the lane to the cottage opposite. The lady there was nice, but made me race around with her daughter a lot. We moved from there when I was two years old. The house is gone now. A hospital was built on it, then upgraded more recently.
When I was four, I raced from our small living room in the new cottage into the kitchen and back again. I was excited by the storm that was brewing. I remember it well, my grandmother who was brought up in the mountains and moved here was clapping as I raced around. I had a high chair in that house when we first moved, but I graduated to the table and the reason I remember the high chair on the night of the storm is because my younger sibling was sitting in it. I remember him sitting in that spot and throwing a banana at the vicar. The chair was made of wood and metal, not plastic. It had flowers on. I jumped and laughed at the banana hitting the floor. Fete des Vignerons, was the plate my grandmother put on the wall. It is an event that occurred every 50 years and she was there.
At five, on Sunday's my father drove an old car around the hills and valleys to mend electrics and I remember on cold winter nights listening on the car radio to songs which he would sing to. Much later, it was to a programme called Single Something Simple, but I must have been 12 or 15 by then. As we drove, we were amazed by the white lights in the valley below, each one resembling a tiny firefly but in fact was a hamlet or maybe two or three a village. I remember the pattern. I saw it again, instant recall, when driving on some hills overlooking Cheltenham and Gloucester when I was 60. There were no car seats when I was five. If your parents cared for you, they would put cushions on your seats to see the view and put a pillow round your head to sleep on. No notion of safety, just loving comfort. No seat belts would fit you, but you would always naively get home safe. When he indicated to turn, a little flashing arm would bolt out from the side of the car for other motorists to see.
One day, Mr Adams who lived next door took us to school. My mother was not around that morning. Mr Adams had a bench seat in the front of his long estate car which made a noise as he turned the key. When it was frosty the noise was loudest. The tall yew trees that dropped little red seed capsules onto his roof and bonnet are still there today. I drove past them two weeks ago, but the there has been no frost for a long time.