My fist visual memory is probably not my first memory but its is the first I can remember because I have a vey poor memory of my youth; but this image has always been in my head and it can’t be from a photograph so it must be a memory. It is an image of all three of us, my twin brother, my younger sister and myself and we are sitting at the top of the stairs in our small south London council flat above a chip shop and we are sitting on top of a rather flattened stuffed elephant. It doesn’t really look much like an elephant, it just looks like a big fat sausage of a body and a big fat trunk, I suppose. And the 3 of us are sitting in the dark at the top of the stairs on the elephant and I guess we must have been playing but we‘ve stopped playing because all we can hear downstairs is my parents arguing, shouting, and Wally, who’s not my dad was drunk and he was saying: “He is not your dad, don’t believe a word of it, he is not your dad”. And the stairs were carpeted and the walls were dark and we were sat quite precariously upon that fat elephant, I think we use to slide down the stairs on it but we weren’t sliding down the stairs.
And when I was asked about the first visual memory I had, I made some protests that I never remember anything and yet this bloody image came into my head instantly… instantly. So I guess I do remember things

Memory