Ian McMillan: A brush with the past that swept me away

Shops with big signs in the window that say "Back to School" next to photographs of impossibly shiny children; hints of the ghost of a chill in the early mornings that cause you to turn back at the door as you go out for your stroll and try to remember where you put your cardigan way back in June; the sudden realisation as a cloud covers the sun in the late afternoon that you might not be able to wear your shorts forever.

In our house, one harbinger of autumn is the booking of the chimney sweep. We last lit the fire sometime in late May, and I guess we'll be lighting it again in September, and my wife always books the sweep for this time in August, in the hiatus between what we still call our Big Holiday and our trip to the Edinburgh Fringe to sit aghast in small rooms as unfunny comedians sweat in the harsh light of failure.

The sweep came last Friday after we'd moved the stuff from around the fire: the companion set, (that's coal tongs and a little shovel for you

young 'uns), the coal scuttle, the clock on the mantelpiece and, crucially, the stuff behind the clock: the very important letters that

we'd forgotten we'd got or had spent hours looking for, the book token that somebody gave me ages ago, and an envelope containing 30 spare quid that nobody could identify.

"Is it my birthday money?" my wife asked. "Is it my birthday money?" I asked. We couldn't agree, although I guess it's more likely to be hers than mine, as her birthday is in July and mine's in January, even if that region behind the clock is a kind of time capsule, the sort of place Dr Who might end up sometime. The Land Behind The Clock: a lost world populated by out-of-date book tokens and last year's round-robin newsletters. And thirty spare quid in a white envelope.

When the sweep came, he wasn't much like the clich idea of what a sweep should look like. In other words, he wasn't Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. His face was clean. He wasn't carrying a sack with brushes sticking out of it. He wasn't wearing a top hat at a jaunty angle, like the sweeps do that get invited to Scottish weddings to stand next to the kilted piper and the bride and groom like some kind of strange tribute band. He was carrying a machine and some dust-preventing blankets.

We left him to it and his machine whizzed and buzzed and whirred as we carried on playing Monopoly in the other room and I bought a hotel on Old Kent Road. Well, they're only 50 quid. You can almost find that behind the clock.

Then the sweep shouted through: "Can you check the brush please?". The years melted away. My wife and I and grandson Thomas dashed into the back garden to see the brush poke triumphantly into the air from the chimney pot, and as I ran I remembered running with my dad into our garden on Barnsley Road in the 1960s to watch the brush coming out.

I remember my dad standing in the garden and pointing to the roof. I remember a moment of tension as nothing happened and the only sound was Mr White next door pushing his lawn mower laboriously up and down the grass. I remember my dad squeezing my hand as we gazed at the sky like birdwatchers looking for rare buntings. Why does memory work like this? Why does a shout from a chimney sweep in August 2010 push me back to a detailed picture of my distant childhood, vivid as a film?

Why do I recall exactly what my dad was wearing, the check shirt, the grey trousers, the tie that he always put on when he was gardening? Why can I remember that Mr White had got a flat cap on and that his

lawnmower was green?

I guess it's because some things are just an unbroken thread that link straight back to your early years, and a chimney sweep is one of them. Back in the 1960s, the sweep's brush emerged triumphant in a puff of soot and my dad and I ran back inside to tell him.

In 2010, Thomas was impressed but he said he couldn't remember the time when I'd carried him into the garden as a baby to watch the same thing. I was disappointed but I reckon he'll remember it in a few years.

That's the thing about memory: it hides behind the clock for decades and then you just rediscover it when you're clearing things away.

And the 30 quid ? It'll pay for a few fish suppers in Edinburgh!