-28

i remember.
actually i don’t remember a lot – this is partly because i have a memory like a goldfish but mostly because i have lived a very dull life.
my earliest memory is of me in a park with my dad (it is not an interesting story – but i am going to tell it. however i must preface this story with a disclaimer i can’t say for sure if this happened or is a memory of a story my dad told. my dad was a teller of tall tales).
as another digression the earliest tales of my life are apocryphal. there is the one where the first word i said was ‘fuck’ – given my potty mouth this does have the ring of truth to it. then there is the story of how i got out of my cot to slap my dad (or my mum – depending on the storyteller) for laughing at doris day in ‘calamity jane’ – given the fondness i have for doris and the movie who knows. the final one involves a ghost telling my parents to move my cot in order to save my life, they move it and later that night the ceiling fell in on the room i had been in – your guess is as good as mine.
anyway.
back to the story of me in the park. i am around 4 or 5. i am wearing a jumper (probably with a pattern on the top half and plain at the bottom and probably knitted by my gran) and i think i am in a paddington bear style duffel coat. it is autumn going into winter. dad would have been dressed in jacket shirt and trousers. we would have been in the park to walk the dog, sally, and for me to run around mindless kicking a ball. dad would have been puffing away on a cigarette or five. leaves were everywhere and there was a wind blowing. dad kicked the ball. i chased it (even then it was obvious that i was never going to be a good footballer). as i was running towards the ball what i thought was a large patch of leaves turned out to be a large patch of leaves covering a large deep puddle. unlike in the cartoons where the protagonist realises there is something wrong and their legs run furiously in empty space i just sunk into a cold deep puddle.
oh don’t worry i was never in danger – it wasn’t that deep.
just deep enough to soak and scare me.
funnily enough it hasn’t stopped my child like love of the rain or of puddles. what has made puddles a misery for me is that pretty much all my shoes and trainers have holes in them.