My earliest memories were in Callington Road. I opened the curtains once at night time and there was a huge green bug on the window, bright like it was glowing, it seemed so alien and it scared me. Or maybe I dreamt it, and all I remember is the remembering of the dream.
When my Dad shoved sticks through the bathroom window from outside, so they landed in the bath with me and my two younger brothers, that’s not one of my memories. But I remember the layout of the house, and I could picture that scene clear as anything I could actually remember, so when I heard it, it stuck. That’s what you do when your parent tells you something’s real. You believe them entirely, it becomes absorbed into your reality.
Here’s some of my own: In the front garden, jumping over our plastic scooters, chunky and hollow, more built to survive being dragged around by tiny people than to make you go super fast. And finding part of a toy on the floor of the cupboard in our narrow bedroom, almost left behind before we moved house. I treasured that thing for years after, like it was something special.
In that bedroom, I remember following lines along the flowery wallpaper in my mind, imagining traversing them, years before I’d follow along with someone else’s lines on the Nintendo. I remember the smell and the taste of the dust from whatever the ceiling was coated in, I was on the top bunk, I’d stretch my legs upward as if I was walking on it, particles dropping down onto my face.
Endless hours I spent, staring up at that ceiling. I was never a good sleeper. I’d often hear the scary sound of the machine monster, whirring along outside, getting louder, reaching its crescendo — the scariest part — then whirring away into the night. I never dared to look out my window to see what it was, like how you keep your feet under the covers so the monsters can’t get you. My brother James, he could sleep fine, and much better since he got the magic stickers from the doctor that stopped bad dreams from happening. He never had to experience the terror of what I later realised was just a milk float.
Strange and distant times now, those years where the imaginary was more present than the real. Cartoons were rare treats, no watching them back-to-back when there’s only four TV channels. You’d make up your own realities instead, though often inspired by the stuff in the cartoons, which could occupy thoughts for days, months, even years, reoccurring obsessions shaping what you’d get to think about, fantasise about, want to be like when you’re older. Climbing trees like Action Man, living the lives we imagined for our plastic poseable men. I’d search car boot sales for new ones to play with, digging through old boxes under tables that held an endless sea of fascinating intricacies, metal and wood, huge objects that wouldn’t fit beside them, and tiny trays filled with things I didn’t understand, but was intrigued by.
The last time I played with toys like that was at a clinic, waiting for Mum, maybe her waiting for me. Another boy sat opposite watching me, I was too embarrassed to make the noises of my men fighting, it lost its magic after that. My brothers still played with toys in the same way, for much longer than I did, and it changed how I saw them somewhat.
There was a cake that Granny made, covered in blue feathers. It was meant to be a spider, long before that word became scary to me, back when insects were things you’d pick up and watch crawl around your hand, and talk about in school, and had googly eyes in the storybooks.
The memory of that cake came back to me late. I was maybe 15, getting high with friends and fellow weirdos in Kansas, a flashback like I’ve never experienced since. Seeing the kitchen at the height that I would’ve been, not like how you remember things now, with your current height and mindset. Smoking weed at other times, I’ve looked backwards in time across human history, empathising with, for example, how it might have felt to be an ancient Roman — but never that far backwards through my own timeline.
The closest thing I’ve had since then was something quite different, on LSD. I saw the visual patterns I could remember from when I was tiny, patterns I’d seen on the stairs as I climbed them, the drug re-activating parts of my brain left unconnected for a very long time. Or maybe it just felt that way, with the direction of that trip bringing back overwhelming feelings of attachment and connection to things I’d made personal, like how I’d look at the familiar way I’d laid my things down on the table, and it felt a manifestation of myself: how they were placed; the history of them; the emotional meaning behind even my phone being something I could recognise feeling while sober, but couldn’t fully identify or explore yet.
I could remember those attachments from when I was little, things feeling like they’re part of me because of the pattern of bears on a mug, or the smell of Mum when she hugged me. That acid trip granted me a new understanding of how these connections make us what we are, the strength of them setting the direction of our species, driven by the cosy warmth of loving attachment.