Red buses pass over my wardrobe

1948

     My earliest memory is of sleeping with my mother and creeping over her slippery pink satin nighty, whilst feeling fearful but excited at the same time. The reason for the fear was that I was trying to 'latch on' without waking her. Mission Impossible!

     I'd been breastfed, and my mother told me I approved of the system so much so she couldn't persuade me to stop. At one point seeking help from the doctor who gave her some 'bitter alum' to apply to her nipples!

Years later, she saw the funny side, sharing with friends amusing anecdotes about her many attempts to encourage me to cease. She recounted on how upon her first application of the bitter alum and offering it to me, I'd scrunch up my face and humorously say "natty tittie." By this, I guess I must have been at least two years old, yet still obviously grappling with the old problem of kicking the habit.

However, what particularly amused my mother was the subsequent turn of events. Soon, the bitterness of the alum ceased to bother me entirely! And, in a surprising twist, I would occasionally reach for the jar on her bedside table and quietly hand it to her, all while cherishing my satin haven. It appeared I'd developed an acquired taste for bitter alum!

This offers an intriguing reflection of how you can acquire a liking for something that was once perceived as distasteful or even repulsive (I sense an art analogy brewing). Consider this thought for later.

At about the same age, a striking experience was of being thrown up in the air by a man dressed in strange clothes (which turned out to be a sailor's uniform).

My aunt Mary's house was Victorian, very dark and with only one small sash window overlooking the graveyard. It lacked electricity but instead had a gas light fitting that hung down in the centre of the room about three feet from a fancy plaster ceiling rose and a very high ceiling.

A picture rail ran all around the walls which was also about three feet from the ceiling. The sailor was aided and abetted by three brothers (all grown men) and when I was thrown up to the ceiling, my lasting memory is of their laughing faces shrinking so small as the ceiling loomed perilously close to my head.

I was in a state of absolute shock and fear but, paradoxically, as terrified as I was, upon being caught and feeling momentarily safe, I gave out an involuntary laugh of relief which signalled unintended encouragement to the sailor and his cohorts to repeat the terrifying act, perpetuating the cycle of terror and laughter over and over again.

Another memory is of observing blurred images moving across the wall above my wardrobe. These shifting images, initially unclear, were the result of people, cars, and buses passing by the house and being projected onto the wall opposite the window.

It intrigued me to ponder the phenomenon—why were these images upside down and moving in the opposite direction of the actual traffic?

When I moved the curtains, the images changed and when I made the gap in the curtains small, and only at the top, the images became clearer but darker.

Only years later, in my career as a photographer, did I realise that I was essentially lying inside a functioning camera. And the gap in the curtains acted as a crude pinhole, projecting the outside world onto the walls of my room.

*Camera – Latin meaning room.