Can Your Earliest Childhood Memory Steer Your Present Day Quirks? Plus The History of the Garden Gnome.

Can your earliest childhood memory effect the person you become? Mine seems to creepily suit my kitsch niche.

I've lived in Bangor, Northern Ireland most of my life, but for my first two years I lived on the Castlereagh Road in Belfast. 

I have no memories of the house, inside or out, but I've watched hours of video of myself as a baby. My dad bought one of the first home video cameras, a giant thing complete with bulky machine to plug into, this was 1980.

I've watched myself sitting in a high chair, listening to the entirety of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds- which explains why I've always found it so bloody terrifying!

Its not that that springs up as my only memory of life on Castlereagh Road, and therefore my earliest. I remember being taken on walks a number of houses down, to look at a neighbour's front garden, which was decorated with dozens of little garden gnomes. 

Gnomes are one of the symbols of kitsch, which seems spooky given my blog now, and how I choose to decorate my home and the things I love in life. 

So that's my history, but what of the history of the garden gnome? This info graph from Museum Selection plots their path to our gardens, from 19th centuary Germany.