REMINISCE BY GILLIAN NIX

Here is my submission for this month's theme.  I made two separate lino carvings and printed them together on one piece of paper.  Hope you like it!

 

For this month’s theme I started to think back to my earliest memories as a child.  I have two very vivid memories from when my family lived in Union Street, Greenock in Scotland.  I don’t know how old I was, but I was able to walk about and I can remember my line of vision being quite low down, so I must have been quite little.

The first memory relates to the image of the fish. Dad had been fishing and had brought home a big dead fish, it was night time and the lights were on in the kitchen.  He lifted me up on the side of the kitchen bench and I began examining the dead fish.  To my surprise dad lifted out the eye of the fish and pretended to eat it, yuck!  I remember that I started squirming and squealing and then there was lots of laughter because of my reaction.

The second memory relates to the key.  Two policemen came to the front door one day enquiring about a young woman who had been murdered in the local area.  I remember peering through the legs of my parents and feeling a bit scared of the men in uniform.  Mum and dad said they didn’t know anything but the told the police about a key they had found when they were gardening a few days earlier.  I remember my parents giving them the key and that was the end of the conversation.  Keys have interested me ever since. 

I was telling my parents about these memories recently and mum told me that the case of the dead girl has still not been resolved.  It was strange having the conversation with my parents about my earliest memories as neither of them remembered the fish, and they said they only vaguely remembered the police coming to the front door.