family history

"[He] was the first boy who ever kissed me, I was about eleven and he was two years younger than me, quite short and thin, so it was a bit of a shock. And then he sent me a letter at school! My dear it wasn't very well written, all splodgy and terrible spelling mistakes! The teachers were furious, I can remember Miss Millington shouting at me while we ran around the games pitch because it was very shocking to get a letter from a boy even if he was the brother of my school friend. There were very strict rules about letters: on Sunday you wrote to your parents and on Thursday you could write to your parents and someone else from an approved list of ten addresses and the envelopes had to be left unsealed so that the teachers could check what you had written. I was mortified, absolutely mortified, to get such a splodgy letter. Of course, he is a millionaire now."

Granny's memories of boarding school 1948 - 1956

family history

"When I was about six I was playing with the children who lived in the house opposite. It was late afternoon and I can remember that there was a very beautiful golden light. Suddenly we saw one of the Betts boys running towards us, shouting and waving his arms. He was rather simple, he was twenty six and he hadn't been called up because he wasn't quite right. Anyway, he had been sleeping under a haystack and when he woke up he saw this great column of rats coming towards him. He was quite terrified. My dear, there were hundreds of rats, thousands of rats, all led by a King rat. They were moving to a new territory and eating everything in their way. We watched and then they turned off into a field and we didn't see them anymore. I know that you don't believe me but it's quite true."

Granny's memories of early childhood in rural Lincolnshire.

family history

"Until I was seven I went to a dame school run by a lady whose brother owned a famous race horse. It was very sweet but I didn't learn a thing, not a single thing, so then I went to a local school twelve miles away on the bus. I caught measles, mumps, scarlatina and everything going so when I was nine my father decided it would be safer if I went to boarding school. It was such a huge building that the vicarage looked very small when I went home but we didn't have half term holidays in those days so I got used to it. I slept in a dormitory with ten other girls and each of us had our own cubicle surrounded with curtains until a new headmistress arrived who had been in the Wrens. She took one look at the curtains, said that they were absolute nonsense and insisted that they were all removed so, my dear, after that we had to change in front of the other girls. We had a white shirt and tunic with three pleats, a navy afternoon dress with detachable white collar and of course a straw boater to wear with our navy suit on Sundays. When I went away I had twenty four handkerchiefs, each one with a Cash's name tape sewn on, my mother had to use her own clothing tokens. She wasn't very happy because I only had one left when I came home at the end of term. It was a plain and simple life, we ran around the hockey pitch before breakfast and then we had porridge. You were given deportment marks every week and they were particularly strict about table manners. You had to talk to the girl on your right and then the girl on your left at the next course and you couldn't ask for anything to be passed to you, you just had to hope someone would notice that you didn't have any water or what have you. I think after being at school I feel that I can cope with anything and all my friends say the same thing. Of course, people tell you that schooldays are the best days of your life but I can remember thinking, I hope not...surely anything is better than this!"

Granny's memories of a post war childhood in rural Lincolnshire.

family history

There were six brothers and six sisters but the men of the family were no good, they drank and gambled and I think two of them went out to Assam to become tea planters. My grandmother, Mary, was the only one who got married, she was the oldest and then Jessie, Tettie and Annie and others whose names I have forgotten. What is Tettie short for? I don't know - Letitia? Margaret? They all lived together in a big old house in Lincoln except Jessie who didn't get on with Mary and so she went off to Hungary. There was a rich widower who courted Tettie, he even asked her to marry him but she wanted time to think about it and that was her chance quite gone and she spent the rest of her life on the sofa. When my father was born he was so small that they had to feed him with a pen dropper. My dear, he was so small that he could fit into a pint pot, the one on the mantlepiece in the blue bedroom. Of course, there were so many children but they none of them survived past eighteen months except my father, all dead with scarlet fever and what-not.

family history

...Aunt Marjorie was an unusual person. When she died the nurse said to me "She didn't need to die, she just decided to. She turned her face to the wall and that was that." They stayed in Liverpool because she didn't want to be a don's wife although I don't know why because you can be as odd as you like. She kept the house as neat as a pin but she wouldn't let anyone in. Thomas and I went once but she wouldn't let anyone else in, not even her own mother. Her mother was very strict and they didn't get on. Did I tell you that we discovered that her mother's mother was Russian? It was such a surprise, it was as though the family had kept it secret, I suppose that her grandfather must have gone to Russia at some point. Of course, Aunt Marjorie's father was killed in the First World War but they didn't tell her and she kept waiting for him to come home. He had given her a little teddy bear and she waited and waited but he never came. I expect that was what started it all...

family history

...Uncle Alan should have been Astronomer Royal, you know. I can remember meeting Bishop Martineau at a garden party and he said "Why didn't he take it? Why? He should have had it". He was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, Bishop Martineau said so, but he stayed at Liverpool. Uncle Alan was a gentle soul and it probably suited him but he took the top prize when he was at Cambridge even though Maynard Keynes was there. His name is on the board at King's, in gold writing, you can see it as you go in. My dear, he used to lecture all over - Oxford, Yale, Brown - but that is why Liverpool has such a good reputation for Maths, because he stayed. He tried to teach me fractions once but we only had about a minute, I was never very good at maths. I expect he worked on Enigma during the war but he never said anything. I know he taught himself Serbo Croat, he really was very brilliant. Of course she had agoraphobia, I've always said that, so she wouldn't let him move...

family history

...Great Aunt Jessie was my father's aunt. When she was quite young she was on a train in France and met this Hungarian countess who was very taken with her and asked her to teach her daughters English. Great Aunt Jessie went back the following year to teach English and stayed in Hungary until after the war. She would return to England occasionally and visit my parents but they never knew what to expect. There was the time that an Hungarian count proposed to her on Skegness Sands, my father said he was desperately, desperately in love with her but she wouldn't have him. During the war she stayed in Budapest and she told us that she went out for fresh air every day, whatever the weather. I suppose she was probably working for the Secret Services. After the war she stayed with us for a while and there was a slight problem when she used forged bank notes, they were very good forgeries, probably from the German camps. I don't think it was her fault but we did have a visit from Scotland Yard which was quite something in a small Lincolnshire village. One night we were coming back from a magic lantern show and we could see her silhouetted on the bathroom curtains reaching up into the lavatory cistern...well, she must have hidden something there. I can remember my father saying "Good gracious, whatever is she up to now?" Great Aunt Jessie was such a strong character that it all got a bit much for my mother so she moved out after three years. Of course, she may or may not have left a son in Hungary...

family history

...Great Aunt Nell was Mummy's mother's sister and when she visited us in Lincolnshire during the war she would save up her rations and then she and my mother would bake. They would set aside a whole afternoon and make jumbles and brandy snaps and gingerbread. She was a warm person and could make my mother laugh - I mean, Mummy was always the same, very serious, but she always laughed when Great Aunt Nell came to stay. I don't have any pictures of her but she was so neat and tidy and wore a blouse with a brooch at her throat, it might have been a cameo, I'm not sure. Great Aunt Nell was wonderful at sewing and made all her own clothes - and when she visited she would make things for me too. Once she cut down one of Mummy's night dresses for me, it was so pretty, pink rosebuds. I had lots of dolls and she would make them lovely clothes out of bits and pieces - there was a mole coloured velvet coat and it was so beautifully made, she really was very good at sewing. Of course she lived in London most of the time because her sister had run away with a man from Scotland who was very rich and he would only let her bring her son so Nell helped to bring up the daughter Didi who was left behind...