Quote:
Originally Posted by Carruthers
My father was three years old in 1928...
I always regret not talking to my grandparents more about their lives through two World Wars and the Great Depression.
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I was lucky in that. Grandad was born in 1923 and I talked to him, Nanny and Auntie Alice (Grandad's sister) about their lives quite frequently.
It started as a school project when I was 10 or 11, but I found out they liked talking, and I liked listening. When I moved back to Aylesbury and became a part-time carer for Grandad I'd often prompt him into stories I remembered.
Nanny was the best at them, even though she liked me the least. But she made it all seem real; the street sellers, the precarious way of getting by while pretending to be respectable, the dancing, getting on trams in curlers and getting off glamorous in full make-up.
Alice told funny, stoic stories about the Blitz and bomb-blasted London.
Grandad told me about the East End when he was a boy, the conditions they lived in, the animals they kept and ate, working for the Jews on shabbat. He was always ashamed that he couldn't fight in WWII (I've said here before, he tried to enlist twice, once under his brother's name but was turned down) but he told stories about the family in wartime.
And I'm so glad I listened to Dads when he talked about his childhood. Mum knows it all of course. But it's never enough.