And as mentioned in the past couple of days, it's the really small things that stay in the memory. I do vaguely remember my first ever day at school. In those days it was much more of a wrench than it is today. Then you went straight from this warm comfortable place at home into some alien territory inhabited by lots of children you had never met before, along with lots of much bigger children you soon wish you had never met. Actually that's not quite true as I can't remember the older children at all! Today there's playgroups, nurseries and then school. So going to school is nowhere near the culture shock it once was.
I remember a very shallow paddling pool that we very rarely used and alongside it a sandpit that we also very rarely used. I recall having a very long afternoon play break on one particular day when we played cowboys and Indians which meant running around aimlessly slapping your own backside if you were a cowboy and running around aimlessly making strange whooping noises if you were an Indian. I have no memory as to how it was decided who would be cowboys and who would be Indians or who won the battle.
I remember identical twins in my class - Susan and Sally - but not having problems telling them apart. Of course I remember the teachers - most of whom were lovely. I remember playing marbles and conkers in the playground and David Bussey promising to give somebody two shillings (10p - quite a lot of money in those days) for anybody who could come up with something that was impossible to do and then talking nonsense in trying to make us believe that the most ridiculous things were possible (can't recall what any of these were). There was also a boy who threw pennies into the playground and then watched us fight to get hold of them. That could have been David as well.
I remember vaguely taking the 11 plus and passing for the Norwich School (waiting for the brown envelope to drop through the letterbox at home - a light parcel meant fail while a fat parcel meant pass because it contained forms that had to be filled in). I remember all my mates going to the City of Norwich School (CNS) which made me feel rather lonely at the thought of going to a different one.
I remember being wrongly accused of knocking over a balsa wood model and of being wrongly accused of writing something nasty in my exercise book. I also remember being upset at letting a teacher whom I loved down when I sprayed water over the cloakroom floor by holding a finger over the nozzle of the drinking fountain.
I remember carrying chairs from the classroom into the main hall. I remember special Christmas teas with sandwiches made from that disgusting salad spread stuff that seemed to feature bits of peas in some horrible sauce.
I remember being Dick Whittington in a school pantomime and having to eat a crust of bread on stage. I remember the cricket teacher not being able to bowl me out and bowling faster and faster without any success. I remember playing football but never getting into the school team and how proud I was when I became friends with the school captain. I remember spending what seemed forever getting home because we were playing games, usually involving tagging others if they weren't holding onto a gate post. It was a ten minute walk to my home but sometimes it could take an hour.
Above all I remember being happy at Kinsale Avenue School in Hellesdon just outside Norwich. In fact I was pretty happy during all my schooldays and cannot remember a day of being bullied.
* * *
The more travelling we do and the more places we visit, the more difficult it is to remember exactly where we have been. It also becomes more and more difficult to compare places with each other.
But just occasionally we visit somewhere outstanding. I have wanted to go to Ludlow in Shropshire for a long time, ever since making a study of the Tudors.
For me Ludlow is the place where British history took an unexpected turn. Ask any young person to name a famous king of England and the majority would probably go for Henry VIII. The man known for his huge size and his six wives, not to mention sacking the monasteries and founding the Church of England because Catholicism didn't suit him!
Henry's older brother Prince Arthur at the age of 16 married Catherine of Aragon in an arranged wedding. They went to Ludlow Castle where there is doubt over whether the marriage was consummated or not. This later became important after Arthur's death when Henry VIII used the non consummation as a reason for marrying what was his sister-in-law.
Now I get the sweats. When it's a hot day I only have to walk down the road and I drip. But Arthur died in Ludlow Castle from the sweats which were were basically the plague. Catherine also got the sweats but recovered and the rest, as they say, is history.
The marriage between Arthur and Catherine was an arranged one but there is a suggestion that the two got on fine after initial problems. If Arthur had lived he could well have had a son. He would have become King Arthur (the real one rather than the one from myth), had a son who would subsequently become King and the man who became Henry VIII would just have been a footnote in British history.
Arthur's heart was buried in Ludlow Church (well I guess it's a change from I left my heart in San Francisco) although his body was buried in Worcester Cathedral. We have visited both.
So what about Ludlow? Well we fell in love with it despite confusing parking charges (here he goes again I hear you say - always prattling on about parking charges).
As you approach Ludlow there are a number of places where you can park along the road. These charge 70p an hour (payable at a meter). Go further into the town and it's £1.80 an hour (yes £1.80 an hour). But go to the large car park close to the rail station and it's just 30p an hour. The difference in charges doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. I assume they try to discourage people from parking on roads in the centre, although it doesn't work because most of the bays were occupied.
We actually started by parking in the Tesco's car park. Here two hours are free providing you spend £5 or more in the store. That gave us enough time to wander round town and decide whether it was somewhere we wanted to spend more time in - which it was.
So we gave the local economy a shot in the arm by buying a load of Christmas presents off the market which was a mix of food and crafts. The mulled cider went down particularly well. The stallholders were very friendly and one did answer a question that has been on my mind for many years - is it Shrewsbury as in the Taming of the Shrew or Shrewsbury as in Shroe? He told us it's definitely Shrewsbury as in the Taming of. A few locals apparently try to pronounce it the other way but it just isn't on. Mind you as I write this they are talking on the local news programme about flooding and they have just pronounced it Shroe-sbury. So the debate goes on.
We didn't have time to go into the castle but I bought a book on Prince Arthur from the shop. So we did our £5 of shopping in Tescos and moved the car to the 30p an hour job. Why is it that machines always assume more knowledge than we often have? The instructions for Tesco's were:
1/ Park your car
2/ Shop in store and spend at least £5
3/ Validate your parking token in the machines.
1 was fine. I knew how to park the car. 2/ was quite easy as well - milk, a newspaper and some vegetables and we were there. 3/ was confusing. I waved the parking receipt/token at the machine and a green light flashed. But then we watched another customer to see what you actually had to do. And yes you had to touch the screen to get it started. Nowhere did it say "touch the screen to start."
Had to input the final three letters of our registration number and spookily it then came up with the make and number of our car along with the time that we entered the park. Talk about Big Brother being with us.
It wasn't difficult to spend another three hours in Ludlow. Had lunch in a cafe on the river and then a lengthy walk round, making a mental note to return again soon.
The thing that struck me about the place, apart from its obvious history and the magnificence of the church, was its community spirit and love of heritage. There are blue plaques at virtually every turn and we called in at a book shop and picked up a number of Heritage Society magazines which were all top quality and free.
So with my thirst for history quenched we left Ludlow and I hope you enjoy some of the photographs attached although I'm not sure they do it real justice.