Memories of your childhood

[Bluelinen]

A bit of light distraction...

I was born in the late eighties and the best years of my childhood were the nineties. Some of my fondest memories are of my mum taking a friend and I to the local pool on a Saturday. She would sit by the side while we splashed around having the time of our lives, bobbing around the "lagoon" area, pelting down the slides and rushing back to the big pool every time the horn would sound for the wave-machine to start up again.

Afterwards we would shower, dry off and go to the cafe upstairs with mum be treated to hot cones of chips with ketchup (a very unique-tasting ketchup that I've never managed to replicate or find again!).

To this day I find it impossible to clean the bathroom without the smell of bleach/chlorine instantly taking me right back to those Saturday trips out with mum. The smell immediately triggers a wave of memories and I can practically taste the chips in my mouth, hear the shrieks of other excited children playing and the crash of water and feel that slightly cold soggy-swimsuit feeling you get when you're mostly dry but your rolled-down swimsuit is the last thing to come off.

Anyone else have any lovely childhood memories that creep up on them at the most unexpected times?

Swimming, tree climbing, doing a hobby with my dad (which is too outing to name)camping holidays, making igloos in winter and dens in the summer, my mum making fried eggs and mashed potato for dinner, making perfume with rose petals in old honey jars, cycling round the countryside in summer.

My dad was a plasterer. The sight of a cement mixer or the smell of plaster and I am transported to being a child getting a hug from him in his work jumpers it is a very safe, loved feeling.

Summertime in the garden, the smell of fresh-cut grass, wet roses and tangerines. The (slightly itchy) grass indentations in the skin of my legs when I stood up from lying on the lawn with my nose in a book for the afternoon.

Hot chocolate from a jug shaped like a blue chicken on Saturday evenings, watching Blind Date and Gladiators.

Going round and around the brick path that led around my grandparents house on my roller skates, on my own, for hours. And stopping every now and again to watch those TINY red bugs that used to come out from the red brickwork - what happened to those tiny bugs? I haven't seen any for years.