I used to think it strange that I have clear memories from the age of two, wrote Brian Backhouse. However, as most of my tribe of eight (now 7, lost one) also have this faculty and Jean, my wife, can also remember from about the same age I feel it must be in the genes.

I was born in December 1929 in Woolwich SE 18 at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies, Samuel Street. My parents had married in 1925 and eventually moved to Lydenburgh Street, Charlton, which to say the least was a somewhat rough and poor area close to Siemens Cable and Battery Factory where both my parents worked. Just a couple of minutes away was the River Thames.

Brian Backhouse's father with his Groom's Bakers cart, pictured in the 1920's before Brian was born. His father, apparently, used to walk 13 miles to the bakers to see to his horse, do his round, stable and groom the horse and then walk 13 miles back. On a Sunday, although there was no round, he had to see to the horse, which meant another 26 mile round trip. When Brian was born, he left and went to work at Siemens cable works about 5 minutes away.

My first clear memory is of seeing a rat sitting on the pram looking at me and then being wheeled in the pram along a road with a very high brick wall on one side and a rather large 'noisy thing' passing by on the other. The brick wall was the surrounding wall of the Woolwich Dockyard and the 'noisy thing', a tram.

When I told my mother many years later she remembered vividly the incident particularly as she had to chase the rat off the pram prior to taking me to the Hospital for Mother's and Babies on my last visit to the welfare clinic.

Later, as a toddler, I remember our small back yard, the outside toilet with the 'thunder box' type seat and how I was always frightened that I would fall down the hole.

Inside the house, when it became dark, the gas lamps flickered and glowed, making a hissing sound. A black kitchen range in the back room (not the scullery) that never seemed to go out and on which there was always a large kettle with steam coming out of the spout.

I remember the sugar boat and Tate & Lyle factory fire across the other side of the river vividly. I was nearly three, my mother told me in later years, and I remember the firemen with their large shiny gold-coloured helmets, donning their breathing apparatus by the steps that led down to the river, before boarding the boat that took them out to the sugar boat.

In those days the BA (breathing apparatus) appeared to be like the old World War I gas masks with enormous round glass lenses with a tube coming from a pack on their chests; to me for many years the figures of these firemen in their black uniforms and strange faces gave me nightmares.

It was from this address too that my father took me, as a toddler (I was probably nearly 3), to see my first pro football match at Charlton Athletic's Ground (just five minutes away) that had been built in the old chalk pits; Charlton, a team that I have supported through 'thick and thin' ever since.

I've no idea who the team was that the 'Addicks' were playing that day but I remember being perched on my father's shoulders, in what is now the North Stand to the left of the goal posts. Bewildered by all the noise and not understanding what all the fuss was about I remember it as a day I didn't enjoy.

Most Saturdays and Sundays we went to see my Grandparents who lived about half a mile away by the side of the railway track that ran from London to the Kent coast via Woolwich & Dartford. I spent a lot of the time on the footbridge with my elder cousins waiting for the locomotives to go under so that we could smell the smoke and steam as they passed with a whoosh.

Nearly 70 years later I still feel the excitement whenever I see, hear and smell a steam loco, even the model ones.

It was on these weekends too that my father used to take me to the pub to get the jug of beer for my Grandparents just before lunch. My father used to enjoy his pint and always brought me out a glass of lemonade whilst I waited at the door of the snug. In those days the snug was also today's off licence although I seem to remember it was always draught beer in a jug you took yourself; I don't remember bottles.

I'm not too sure at what date we moved to Abbey Wood, it had to be before I was three as that was the age then when we started infants' school. I don't remember any other school; the first I remember is Bostall Lane Infants (London County Council school), the Headmistress Mrs Holmes and my teacher Mrs Locke -- two ladies who had such an influence on my life.

I kept in touch through the years until about 1948 when I lost touch through service
commitments.

My main memories here are of green camp beds on which we used to sleep for an hour after lunch, although I cannot remember ever eating lunch; memories too of multiplication tables and the enjoyment of learning to read. By the age of four most of us were proficient at reading early junior books and could recite up to the 12 times tables.

It was there also that I met my 'first crush', Pamela Holbrook, who lived at the time at 10 Basildon Road. I carried that crush until 1942 when she was then going to the Convent School on Bostall Heath. I saw her with another boy and that was my love killed 'stone dead'.

There was at the time, a battery of 4.7 Ack Ack guns on the heath and I stood at the chain link fence close to a gun emplacement hoping that the gun would blow up and put me out of my misery. A gunner saw me, came over and listened to my tale of woe, gave me a bar of chocolate, and sent me on my way with a few 'choice words' about women.

Co-incidentally, some years later, I met this soldier whilst I was a serviceman under a set of circumstances that were strange to say the least. However, that is another memory, another time and another place in the future, and I have digressed from my early school days.