Snapshot: My father and me on the river

I learned to swim in 1946 when I was three, tied to the river bank under the watchful eye of my mother. This photo shows me that year with my father. Although he didn't teach me to swim, he certainly encouraged me. He made me a string of cork pieces that could be tied under my arms, acting as a buoyancy aid.

He used to talk about having four boys but one with long hair – that was me. He treated us all the same, encouraging us to swim, go rowing, make rafts, cycle, fish from the river bank or play tennis. His country clothes were corduroy trousers, gaiters, check shirts and tweedy jackets – he always dressed the part.

A kind and sociable man, he was a company director, although, given the choice, he would have joined the navy. I remember sitting on his lap when he came home from work. There was never a hair out of place. He smelt of Old Spice and oil, his waistcoat pocket contained a pencil, a Parker pen and a penknife. He had the most beautiful copperplate handwriting. I received one letter from him when I was a student, which he signed off "your loving father, Eugene Amette".

He was rather a corpulent figure, often flushed in the face after a sherry in the Red Lion on his way home. Every weekend if we were not in the country he would take us for walks in the City or London parks or, if it was raining, to the museums or the cartoon cinema in Victoria.

He never attended parents' evenings. That was always left to my mother. There were clear demarcation lines: he was the breadwinner and she was the homemaker.

He supported me when I become an art student, but my studies were not something I could talk to him about. He never criticised my long hair and short skirts.

This all sounds very rosy, but when I became an adult and my father's health started to fail, I had more concerns for my mother and regret never telling my father what I felt about him. Sadly, he died in 1971, aged 61.

Nicolette Amette

Playlist: Childhood journeys to the airport

Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver

"I'm leavin' on a jet plane / Don't know when I'll be back again"

We always took my father's car to the airport. The youngest of three children, I would be wedged in the middle of the back seat, bare legs sticking to the leather in the heat of the Malaysian night, filled with melancholy at leaving for our annual month in Scotland, a cold, grey place of strange customs and dimly remembered relatives.

After my brother and sister went to boarding school, the frequency of these trips to the airport increased as they were ferried back and forth for the holidays. On the way to collect them, I would be full of trepidation, grown used to being a single child and to having the run of the back seat; squeezed into the middle again on the way home, I was silent, in awe of these strangers with their "unaccompanied minor" badges and their grey flannel shirts and long wool socks. As soon as they had become familiar again, they would be off, the drive to catch their plane overshadowed by the imminent separation. Later, I joined them at boarding school, and experienced for myself the exhilaration and foreboding of these dislocating journeys until my father left his job in the rubber industry and we returned to Scotland for good.

What remained a constant was the soundtrack. Dad's car, a large 1960s Rover, had an eight-track tape deck for which – probably due to the early onset of obsolescence – he had only three chunky, white cassettes. Nana Mouskouri and Val Doonican were regulars on the nocturnal runs to the airport, their songs filled with sentiment, but for a self-dramatising and over-literal child there was only one choice: John Denver's Greatest Hits and Leaving on a Jet Plane. How I thrilled to the idea that he had written it for this very moment.

Listening to the song for the first time in years, there is no rush of recognition, no headlong bundling back through the years. I'm not surprised. The memories are there, but the closest I come to my childhood is the time I spend with my own children. I wonder what songs they will fill with emotion to help them through the inevitable stresses of growing up. I'm sure that, living in the suburbs, Leaving on a Jet Plane won't be one of them.

Keir Roper-Caldbeck

We love to eat: Ham and crisp sandwiches

Ingredients

Fresh white bread and butter

Ham sliced from the bone

Potato crisps

When I was about four, in the early 60s, my dad was always paid on a Friday. This usually meant Thursdays were "empty cupboard day". We were often helped out by Granny who lived 12 miles away and came to visit on the No 30 bus.

Mum and I, with my sister in the pushchair, walked in to town to meet her off the bus and it was then only a few yards to David Greig's the grocer. In those days, there were still grocers in the centre of town and this one was full of treats that you couldn't get in the local shop.

Inside, there would always be a joint of cooked ham sitting on a tall ceramic stand and the assistant would use a huge knife to slice off as many pieces as you asked for. Granny might say, "Just half a slice more" as it was being weighed, and I always hoped we would get another piece with a small layer of fat on the edge, covered in yellow breadcrumbs. We also bought a large packet of crisps, which I remember as a bit of a treat, and if we were really lucky, chocolate sandwich biscuits in gold wrappers. These wrappers were saved to play with later.

At tea time, we made sandwiches at the table with bread and butter on one plate and ham on another, for us to help ourselves.

If Mum and Dad were not looking, or were in an especially good mood, my handful of crisps went into the sandwich as well. They did, however, draw the line at me flattening the whole lot with the palm of my hand. I thought this made it extra tasty as the crisps squashed into the butter, and I still occasionally do this today when no one is looking. Anne Richardson

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