Although I had posted this a few hours ago it seems to have disappeared; here 'tis again.

The earliest I can date with any certainty was when I climbed onto a box to watch my mother preparing a meal. She was standing at the kitchen bench and I had propped the box in front of the stove, which was electric and had coils on the top above the oven. One of the coils was bright red and at eye level; my eyes were glued onto it. I reached out my hand but the coil was too hot for my hand to get too close. At that point I became aware of my mother watching me like a hawk and I climbed back down. We left that house ("Ravenswood", in Ravenswood Ave, Ivanhoe) when I was about 18 months old. Apparently my mother had been out in the back yard hanging out the laundry when she suddenly (as mothers do) became "aware" that something was wrong. She happened to look up to the roof of the (double storied) house; there was me, at 18 months old, crawling out across the tiles having climbed up from a window. At my 21st (attended by all my rockclimbing mates) she recounted this to them.

The possible relationship between language and memory has intrigued me since about 1964. I had a very strong memory of standing on a hilltop on my grandfather's dairy farm in South Gippsland. I was part of a family group that had been out rabbiting and someone asked "What's the time?" "Nine o'clock" was the reply. In the memory I have a clear vision that the sun was still above the horizon; about half a handspan, in adult speak. Much much later I became aware that this memory was impossible because the sun never set later than 7.30pm in southern Victoria.

In 1964 I was part of an ecology excursion to the mangroves of Westernport Bay, also in southern Victoria. Sitting in the boat on our return we were having a discussion about the likelihood of Victoria introducing Daylight Saving, already used in Tasmania for a couple of summers. Our supervisor (Dave Ashton, the Eucalyptus regnans king) said "During the War they had 2 hour Daylight Saving." Unbidden, my recollection of the rabbiting memory flashed through my mind as suddenly explicable.

So, why did I recall it? Was it because it was so impossible? How could I have known it was impossible? How could I have recalled it unless I had "language"? You can bet I never mentioned it to anyone before 1964 because it would have made me appear stupid. And I was mightily impressed that its explanation leapt into my mind so suddenly (literally a few milliseconds) after Dave's comment. Some of Life's little mysteries.

Cheers, Rowan