This is a warm invitation to the world to write to me at No. 1 Nostalgia Place just off Memory Lane in Everever land to tell me your first memory. It should come right out of your head without thinking, the very first image you can recall. It’s part of the anchor-basis, which ties you to the sub-conscious, which is only another name for the inner space we all have within us.

My own first memory is of a very high wall, which was gradually pressing in on me In fact it was the perambulator in which my mother was pushing my little brother gradually crushing me against the wall. My mother didn’t seem to notice. She was walking along singing quite happily until my shouts alerted her. She immediately laughed, pulled the pram to the left and carried on singing. I can feel the scrape of that stone wall on my bare arm yet.

Memories are important. They are the little pockets of nostalgia we dip into now and again just to remember what the past tasted like and sometimes it was good. In this way, we can build up a whole ladder of memories and reach a whole other world whenever we want it. It’s comforting, it’s an escape, but why not?

By the way, I returned to the scene of that wall recently to find that it is no more

than waist-high. Such is the mist of memory.