I must have been about a year old, though at that age time isn’t something you understand — it’s just something that happens around you. What I remember most clearly is the pram. It was blue, and in my memory it feels enormous, like a little boat I sat in while the world drifted past. My mum was pushing it on a walk, the kind of everyday outing she must have done countless times. She’d probably been shopping; I have a faint sense of bags tucked somewhere near the handles, rustling softly as she walked. It’s funny how certain details stay without ever being fully seen.
The photo shows me sitting up in the pram, thumb in my mouth, outside our old house in Kent. The image is grainy now, softened by age, but the moment inside it still feels strangely intact. I remember the pram more than I remember the house behind me. I remember the feeling of being upright, supported, held. The world looked huge from that height — not frightening, just vast, like everything was waiting for me to grow into it.
The walk itself is a blur, but the sensation of movement remains. The steady rhythm of wheels on pavement. The gentle rocking that made everything feel safe. I didn’t know where we were going, and it didn’t matter. My mum’s presence was the whole direction of the day. I can almost hear the quiet sounds of her steps, the soft clatter of something in the shopping bags, the way the pram creaked slightly when she changed pace.
One of the clearest fragments — clearer than the house, clearer than the street — is a woman leaning over me. She appeared suddenly above the pram, her face bright and close, her voice warm. She said “choochicoo” in that sing‑song way adults use with babies. I didn’t understand the word, but I understood the feeling. It was attention, affection, a moment of being noticed. I remember her voice more than her face, the tone more than the expression. It wrapped around me like a soft blanket, and even now, decades later, the sound sits in my memory with a kind of gentle glow.
Early memories don’t come back as full scenes. They return as impressions — the weight of the pram, the coolness of the air, the nearness of a stranger’s voice. They’re misty around the edges, but the centre of them is solid. I don’t remember what my mum said that day, or whether she smiled at the woman, or how long we were out. But I remember the pram, and I remember being seen.
Sometimes I wonder why that moment stayed. Out of all the walks, all the faces, all the early days, why this one? Maybe because it was one of the first times I felt myself as a person in the world, not just a baby being carried through it. Maybe because the pram was my whole universe then, and anything that entered it made an imprint. Or maybe memories choose us rather than the other way around.
A blue pram, a walk with my mum, a stranger’s soft “choochicoo.” A tiny moment, but one that stayed. A misty beginning to a much larger story.