Earliest Memory

 For this assignment I had to interview an elderly member of the public about their earliest memory. I have removed surnames to protect privacy.

Almost eighty years on, Joan can still remember her childhood growing up on a Berkshire farm. Although a far cry from spending her adult life as a nurse in Coventry, Joan credited her first interest in the profession as helping her parents wean calves as a child.

Every spring, she would spend several weeks helping to rear the young animals. “It must have been from when I was five until I was about ten,” she explained, looking thoughtful as if recalling happier days. “I’ll never forget how beautiful they were.”

Once the calves were a few weeks old, she helped feed them with a milk bottle every morning before she and her elder brother made the mile-long trek across the countryside to their village school. She recalled several occasions where they were late after taking too long to complete their chores.

It was this passion for helping the young animals that encouraged her to train as a nurse, something further fuelled by the loss of her brother during the war. Now retired and still living in Coventry, Joan, 84, spends her time with friends and family, who still own the farm today.

On holiday in Bournemouth with her friend Cicely, 80, Joan said she has always felt a natural attachment to rural areas, and explained this as being down to her childhood. “We went where there was work,” she explained sadly, detailing why she moved 80 miles away from the farm. “But it’s nice to be somewhere where you feel happy.”