MEMORIES of childhood are so tantalising. Fragments, sometimes recalled by a smell, a taste, a piece of music, a photograph. We clutch at them and weave them into our lives, sometimes along with our dreams and hopes.

I wrote in The Way We Remember It, Ann Powell and my memories of growing up in Ely in the 1940s and early 1950s, recently published by the Ely Society: "Sometimes towards the end of the War, my memory has the Boat Race being held on the Ouse near Littleport. We went to watch it and I caused a minor sensation by running down the bank towards the river much to the alarm of my parents and others. At one point I remember feeling that my legs might be running away with me, but I stopped short of plunging into the cold water. That is all I recall apart from the crowds and the excitement.

"Now I know that it was February 1944 and the bridge I remember seeing on my right as I ran down the bank was Queen Adelaide bridge. I rationalise that I was with my parents. My father in 1944 was stationed at RAF Duxford, where he was a military policeman, and he was able to spend more time with us. My mother would have come with us but did my grandad and grandma? I can't remember. We were living with grandad and grandma at 'Rosewell' on Prickwillow Road, so we may well have walked. My father had a small car, whether or not he had the petrol, I don't know.

"My Uncle Cliff was in North Africa with the Eighth Army, Auntie Pip would have been at work, Uncle Doug was with the Royal Engineers somewhere in England and Uncle John was with his regiment in the Mediterranean area moving towards landing in Italy. 1944 was the year that would also means memories of the train explosion at Soham and the news that I would never see my Uncle John again, but I didn't know those things then.

"In the end it seems there are more things I don't know than I do about my first, and only, experience of watching the boat race actually happen. But I was there and I really did run down the bank and I do recall the excitement of the crowd and I do remember the boats coming past and the cheering. Strange to think that my younger son, Lee Douglas, is now only a bit older than I was then. Would he have run down the bank? Oh yes, without a doubt. But would he have stopped? I think the sea cadets might have been involved in a dramatic river rescue in his case! "Now I know that Oxford won. Perhaps, at not yet four, I wasn't taking sides. But I was there!"

Published in the Ely Standard on September 12, 2002