– Updated to add – People, there is fantastic stuff on grandparents down in the comments section. Please can I have some more to make it seem that my blog is exciting and interesting. Please.
Still sick as a dog. How can that be? I dragged myself into work yesterday partly because there was a meeting I had to attend and partly because the three kiddies were going to be at home. I was sustained by my colleagues who rushed to the supermarket to buy lemons and honey (imagine) and were deeply sympathetic. Of course their sympathy was only a drop in the ocean of self pity in which I was floating. I take my hat off to full time mothers with no escape like poor Minkleberry.
Have you all seen this unfortunate newscaster from a UK TV station?
I saw a lovely post by another Anne on her grandparents. It made me realise, sadly, I don’t know enough about my grandparents’ relationships. My paternal grandfather died when he was 36 and my maternal grandfather died shortly after I was born. But what Anne says about life for her grandparents was true even for my mother growing up. I have broadband but for years they had no electricity and running water (I gather that this was something of a sore point between my grandparents – he was a bit of a property magnate in an early 20th century Irish small farmer kind of way and he owned a number of properties one of which they had happily lived in for a number of years and which boasted not only a location in town but the twin attractions of, you guessed it, electricity and running water, however, nothing would do him but to go out to the country and run a farm). My mother went to mass in a pony and cart. I know they had a car as well, but I think it must have been later. I know this because my mother told me that she backed it into the pillar of the gate to my grandfather’s lasting chagrin – he is departed but his ire over this incident lives on in my mother’s regretful recollection. They had a constant stream of maids and farm hands working in and around the house. My grandfather used to go to some small distant farm and bring back new maids. Country maids were always best, you couldn’t trust those city girls. It all sounds slightly feudal. Do you know about your grandparents’ youth? Share.
My grandmother (Gladys)met my grandfather (Dick) when he ran errands as an office boy and she was an office junior. She liked him because he was cheeky. She made friends with his sister (Bet) and when she was orphaned (in her mid teens) Bet’s family took her in to live with them.
Dick and Gladys used to go cycling together before they were married. We still have old black and white pictures of them out cycling.
Funny how that echoes Landlord and me. I moved under his roof due to life crcumstances, we also eventually became a couple and we also cycle around the countryside together.
Thanks for the sympathy- I wallowed in it wantonly x
Oh, and poor you. its rubbish being ill and having to work AND look after children. There should be a place for women to go and recouperate. Somewhere warm.
Here’s a depressing thought: “The chances are that only one out of your 8 great-grandchildren will remember your name”.
All sympathy from me. I’m feeling hideous. Hid-E-ous. I need to go to that warm place that Minks mentioned, but aloooooone.
As for newscaster, I had a look. She’s rather obsessed with her hair and generally rather pleased with herself.
I shouldn’t really exist, as my maternal Nana was run over by a horse-and-cart in her twenties and was told she would never have children, She didn’t go overboard in reproducing compared to some of her generation, but she did have 2 children in the end.
How she came to have the accident in the first place I’m not sure. It obviously didn’t hinder her agility to sprint up the road in terror to the shelter when the air-raid sirens went, leaving my mother, who was 13ish at the time, to scoop up her 7 year-old brother and try and catch up with her. Eventually neighbours recognised the pattern and leant a hand in getting them all safely to the shelter.
My father’s parents met in the USSR. Grandpa was an assistant at the Marxism Studies department and met my grandma when she came to their library to pick up some books for a report. He helped her choose the books, and then helped her again when she showed up again, and then one day said he would pick out the books for her only if she let him deliver them to her home. And she needed those books so badly that she agreed. Then there was some dumping of other young men and women and they got married:)
My grandfather was a jesuit from Spain of italian heritage. He moved to the Dominican Republic to do some work as a Jesuit and met my grandmother who was born in St. Barts and had gone to the Dominican Republic to study medicine. She was 23, he was 31. He left the Jesuits and started chasing my grandma. She finally gave in and they had 7 children, among them my father. They had to fight lots of people who did not understand them. It was an interracial couple at the time where it was not the norm. Anyway, my maternal grandparents met through work. My grandfather was an amzing painter and my grandma taught languages. They met at the university both were of french background.
My paternal grandparents met at Oxford. In those days, (1930s) men and women weren’t allowed to go out with each other unescorted and my Nana and Grandpa met because they were chaperones to their two friends. My Nana died in 2001 and my Grandpa in 2003. At my Grandpa’s funeral I met the woman whom my Nana was chaperoning in Oxford – she had married her date who had died in the late 90s and the four of them had remained friends for all those years. If it wasn’t for her, my grandparents may not have met and I might not be here – I did feel terribly sad for her to be the remaining one of the four left.
I’m not sure how my maternal grandparents met – I know they were part of Harrogate high society and there was a 20 year age-gap between them. When my mother was born, her father was already 60. I never knew my maternal grandmother – she died before my parents married in 1966 and my maternal grandfather died in 1974 so I only have very hazy memories of him, it is weird to think he was born in 1885 though. I will ask my aunts how they met – thanks for the question, Waffle. Jando (aka Li’l o).
Never met any of mine. My mother’s mother was Dutch – and died when Mum was only 12, leaving her to bring up several younger siblings. Her Dad was from County Mayo and, apparently, was a mean old bugger who brought in a succession of ‘aunties’ over the years. Dad’s side – no idea. His ‘mother’ turned out to be his grandma, the woman he’s been calling auntie all his life up to the age of 20 was his Mum, and we have no idea who his Dad was (hence the above arrangements). I don’t think he ever forgave them for lying to him all that time. I certainly never met his Mum.
It’s lovely to see my niece and nephews with their grandparents, though.
I never knew my paternal grendparents as my grandfather died when my father was very young. his mother developed a psychotic depression adn was institutionalised for a year (my father lived with his much older sister) before they discovered that sdhe actually had a brain tumour. It was removed and she came home but she was left with fits. one time she apparently burned all the flesh off her arm whilst ironing and had a fit. When my dad started dating my mum he invited her home but forgot to mention any of this – he left her alone with his mother who had a huge fit, completely terrifying my mother who had no idea this was a daily occurrence. His mother died before they got married. He had 2 older sisters and a younger sister who was adopted out by an aunty due to his mother’s indisposition. He’s never met her since or heard from her.
My maternal grandfather grew up as the son of off-licence owners in South Wales. My maternal grandmother was the daughter of a coalmining union leader ( she’s now the biggest Tory ever!) and left home at 15 to become a nanny for the local GP. She said she told him off for being cruel when he called his childre Suzanne and Benjamin as they were such awful names – 40 years later 2 of her 15 grandchildren were called by these names! They met just before the war and got married the year after war broke out. My grandfather was a bomber and survived the war. they had 5 children and moved to England where my grandfather was some sort of manager in a London company. He died in 1993 aged 75. my grandmother is 86 now and currently in Australia meeting her newest great-grandchild (2 months old).
How could I have missed this post??? I love it. There is nothing more that I have enjoyed in my life more than sitting down with my grandmother and hearing about her life. She was born deep in the country and her mother was an alcoholic. They lived in a shack with no running water and with cracks so big in the walls that in the winter the snow would blow in on the floor and the same with the rain. They had a creek in the back where the icebox was and thats how they kept what little food they had fresh. It was a very sad poor life with so many exciting stories that you have encouraged me to write a post about it on my own blog. Her mother died with she was young of consumption and she married my deceased pawpaw when she was 16 and he was 30 and had already been married once. Anyways, she is a wonderful women and is the one person I model my life after.