Reliving the past

[GrannyMac]

Like my OH Mike. Born in London, moved to South Wales pre-school, then Scotland when he was about seven.  His memories of having an English accent at his first school in Scotland weren't happy ones!  He picked up the lingo quickly, but has reverted since moving away.  We came to South Yorks in our early twenties. My connection to Dundee is stronger than his, he feels strangely at home in London, and his older brother moved back there as a young man.  I now have no relatives left in Dundee, but his younger siblings all live there, as do most of their children/grandchildren.

Nice reminder of the Sidlaws!

[Michael Rolls]

They have quite an effect on local weather - they're only a couple of miles east if here, but quite often they will have different weather on their eastern side to their western (here). In fact, this whole area seems to have numerous 'micro climate' areas - often a neighbour and I will compare notes and the heavy rain here (or whatever) didn't happen less than five miles away
Mike

[biglouis]

My fondest memories of being a kid were my visits to my gran. She came from a very different social class from my father (mother was kicked out of the family for marrying him) and she took a fancy to see me when I was about 4. One of my aunts was volunteered to take me to visit her on the first sunday of every month. Shades of Downton Abbey and lady Sylvia running off with the chauffeur.
I loved her house. She and grandpa were out in India during the old empire and the house was filled with Anglo Indian and middle eastern furniture - just as mine is now. She refused to have electricity installed and still had gas lighting when she died in the 1970s. I used to love playing with my dolls on a beautiful ivory inlaid whatnot which was all niches and mirrors. It was like a fairy palace to me. On special occasions she used to allow me to play with her jewellery.


It was a wonderful escape from the drabness and poverty of working class Liverpool.

When I grew older I no longer needed my aunt to take me and I used to visit her every sunday. From age 11 I moved to a school only a few minutes walk from where she lived.  I used to make up reasons to stay on after school and go and see her once or twice a week as well. Rounders practice, hockey practice - god I hated sport - but my parents never knew I was making it up about being in all these teams.


My father hated the middle class because he was never accepted by my mothers family. He could not prevent my going to see her entirely because she was my maternal grandmother and could have hired lawyers. But he would never have approved of my going to see her so often. She gave me "ideas above my station" - yes he actually used that phrase. He even refused to give permission for me to go to France with the school when I was 14 - even though my grandma offered to pay. That too would have given me "ideas above my class".

For a child my age to have the opportunity to travel abroad in the 1950s was very rare. The headmaster begged my mother to try to change his mind. I was top of my class in French and Spanish but to no avail. When he pointed out that it that it would give me an advantage to have something like that on my CV and to talk about at interviews she replied "If I tell my husband these things he will say its just giving her unrealistic ideas. She wont need to talk French to work in a shop or a factory."

I remember telling my father (before I got a walloping) that one day I would travel the world and pay for it with my own money. I kept that promise.

Unfortunately for my father I passed enough GCEs to go into the civil service (which I hated) and later qualified as a librarian. So I missed out on the wonderful experience of working in a factory like my sister.


My gran gave me the money for my first flat when I wanted to leave home and left me the entire contents of her house when she died. That put some of the aunts noses out of joint (even though they got the house) and it was how I got into antiques.

Thanks to my grandmother instilling ambition into me I ended up leaving my parents far behind in both the cultural and the social sense.

[mick607]

What an interesting life you have had BL.