Summer 1966

My First and Favourite Visual Memory 1966

During the twelth day of the sweltering month of August, in a pram, on a pavestone flagged path, in a small garden, of a red-bricked terraced house, in a cobbled side street, in the North of England lies a baby boy, looking up and outwards to the world. He can't walk or talk in words adults may understand but he can see and his senses are alert and all consuming, fully and positively engaged with his environment. The flowing warm breezes, the house sparrows calling, a blend of noises coming from the older children playing on their tricycles, the repetitive whack of a football resonating off a gable-end wall, the ice cream van jingle and the police car siren, the sounds of 'All or Nothing', The Small Faces' latest hit booming out from his mother's stereophonic record player, the white cirrus clouds gently moving and the shapes of the leaves on the tree that hangs above him, the variety of tones and shades, the drifting in and out of focus, the ever changing plays of light on the veins of an individual leaf, like his young life a contradiction, durable and vulnerable. Does he recognize the veins as pathways to a life ahead? the barriers, the dead ends, the opportunities, the possibilities, all mapped out yet changeable in the wind and sunlight sending this innocent fledgling soul on his first trip, his first natural high..