What memories do you have from childhood?

My dad, who is good at suddenly bringing up a conversation out of the blue about something you would never think of off the top of your head, told me one of his fondest memories was eating Battenburg cake at his grandmother's. He thinks they called it chess cake or something like that but as a kid he loved food and it was something he could play with. He was a fiddler.

He remember sitting next to her on a sea-grass stool, eating Battenburg from one of the marbled cake plates on her little round oak table. The living room was a haven of toys and card games. There were matchbox cars whose rubber tyres you could chew off, and tanks that fired spent matches (?). His favourite was the wooden tiles that you could arrange into different patterns. Some of them had been chewed by various dogs over the years, which made the corners a slightly funny shape but didn't dent their attraction.

Grandma would sometimes run through a variety of names including the dog's before she got to yours, he said. You could sit in her living room at that table for hours and never be bored. Nowadays the sea grass stool is in his living room, the oak table under the window, the cake plates in the dresser. I don't remember eating Battenburg though, and I have no idea how to play Rummy.