Memory Mixtape #13: Kitchen Sink

This is the kitchen of the house I grew up in. When I was in Sixth Form, we sold this house and moved into the much smaller barn next door, where my parents still live today.

The boy in the photo is my eldest nephew. He'll be 46 this year. Only four years younger than me, he was much nearer my age than my own brother: all four of my nephews were. Consequently, I'm closer to them, even now, than I am to my own brother. (One nephew died back in 2001. It was an awful thing. I still wonder what he'd be like today.) But this isn't a post about my family, other than to say that, looking at how old Neil is there, I must have been about 8 when I took this photo.

My mum and dad still have the chicken in the window - it's a bowl to keep eggs in, with a chicken lid. The egg boxes on the opposite side of the counter are part of living on a farm. I like the old Fairy Liquid bottle, and I'm guessing that's an upside down basket from a chip pan on the draining board. Does anybody still have a chip pan, or are they another relic of the Health & Safety nightmare that was our childhood? I've no idea why there's a vase on the draining board, or why there's a huge piece of wood propped up in the window... other than that the whole house was wood-paneled, by my dad, so probably it was leftover from an ongoing joinery job. I can just see the top of the old washing machine to the right of the sink... although this was probably quite a new washing machine at the time, as the one I remember from being really little had a mangle on top. And yes, I remember trapping my fingers in it. But that could be apocryphal.

Looking out the pre-double glazed windows that would ice up with scary, frosty patterns in the window, it looks particularly murky out in the garden. I seem to remember two distinct types of weather from my childhood: long hot summers, and gloomy, foggy, drizzly schooldays. I know my first day of school was exactly like that. I cried for most of it.

I must ask Neil if he actually has the photo he appears to be taking of me... because, for the life of me, I can't remember what the opposite side of the kitchen looked like.