It was for a long time one of my earliest memories. I was four, and was on the way back to England with my family after a year spent in Newfoundland. At the airport I was excited to see a Mountie on a horse, in a red jacket and a pinched felt hat. I ran up to him and handed him a piece of chewing gum, which he accepted, leaning down from his saddle to take it.
And yet. On asking several years ago about the event, I was surprised to find that the Mountie wasn’t mounted at all, he was standing by a door. His uniform? He was wearing beige fatigues, and a cap. My memory was a false one, reconstructed from various sources to make it more glamorous.
This came to mind when I was sitting in the Lansdown last Saturday. The first of the new series of Doctor Who was on in the background. Inevitably, the conversation came round to the daleks. And inevitably a bloke remembered hiding behind his sofa when he first saw them on the telly, years ago.
Now this has been something that has bugged me for years. It seems that everybody between the ages of 35 and 55 remembers doing the same thing. I suspect that it is a case of mass false memory. “I bet you didn’t hide behind your sofa,” I said. “I mean, where do people put sofas? Nine times out of ten they are pushed up against a wall. There is no room for children to hide behind them. You’re just saying that because, subconsciously, you want to be part of the crowd.” “Hold on,” said the guy. “I remember where my sofa was when I was a kid. In front of the fire. We had no central heating. People put their sofas in a different place, then. There was plenty of room.” I wonder. Nobody remembers hiding from the Cybermen, and they were just as frightening. AL