What's your earliest memory?

So, it's a Bank Holiday weekend, the last big holiday of the year before Christmas. My children are away on holiday with their grandparents. (Well, actually, as I type this, they've not yet left but chances are, they will have gone by the time you get to read this!)

The children have been excited for weeks about it and no doubt, will come home with some lovely memories of a fun time with Granny and Granddad - more memories in the making possibly. It made me think about early memories of your life. I heard something on the radio a couple of weeks back that many people's early memories are false because it is impossible they would remember such things. Such "memories" develop from their parents and other family members retelling a story to them and the child developing the memory from their imagination, something that is particularly vivid.

I have two memories of early childhood. One of them has to be false. The other, I am fairly sure is real because it is something so insignificant, my parents would not have thought to tell me about it.

As a child, I had migraines. I remember these clearly because I suffered with them regularly into my teens, and then thankfully grew out of them. However, I have grown up to "remember" banging my head on a fence at a very young age (2 perhaps) because my head was hurting so much and I couldn't express the pain I was feeling clearly to my parents. As an adult, I realised I can't have remembered this and it must be because my parents told me that story many times. All I can think now is how worried they must have been.

My real early memory concerns the playgroup I attended. It was held in the church next door to the infant school I was due to attend. My one clear memory of it was playing outside there and looking through the fence at the children playing in the school playground. I remember wishing it was me as I was desperate to go to school and also thinking how grown up the school children were. On reflection as an adult, the oldest children would have been 7 so no age at all, but to me as a 3- or 4-year old, they were very grown up and I wanted to be them.

Of course, my time came soon enough. As I blogged earlier this week, I was not disappointed. I absolutely loved school from the moment I walked in the door. But that memory - of longing to be a child in that playground - has stayed with me throughout my life.

Now, I am going to throw it over to you. Tell me your earliest memory, whatever it might be. If you want, you can blog about it and link back to your post in the comments below. Or, just leave a comment. I'm doing this partly because I'm nosey but also because I'm fascinated by this subject, in the variety of memories and situations that are hopefully going to crop up.

Over to you....