Paphos People

MEMORIES OF MY GRANDPARENTS

This was put forward as a subject at the Paphos Writers Group which I responded to. Other contributions made me realize what I had missed out on.

I don’t really remember either of my Grandfathers, because my maternal Grandfather died in 1952 when I was just three years old from I think a brain tumor. I can remember one incident when I must have been two years old, being taken round the corner to the local pub on his shoulders. It was a dark smoky smelly place full of loud men. Understandably I screamed the place down. I was carried back to their house and deposited in my mother’s lap while he went back to the pub. He was very high up in the Royal and Ancient Order of Buffaloes ‘The Buffs’. It is a charitable organization, like the Freemasons but without the big business connections and on his death my brother and I got a free Christmas party and a coach trip to the seaside every year until we were sixteen.
My paternal Grandfather lived across the other side of town. As transport was not easy and it would have meant a two bus journey either way we weren’t close, only meeting at family occasions. One of which was his funeral when I was nine years old, my first one and I was more interested in all the new people I was meeting. There was no will as such, just a letter which my uncle read out. He left virtually nothing, they lived in the same rented house that they had since my father was born forty years before. But one statement at the end of the letter was his idea of caring for his widow. He requested that ten pounds be put in a safe place to provide for the funeral of his wife. It had to be put somewhere where she couldn’t get her hands on it or she would be down the Bingo with it. He instructed that it could be put into these new Premium Bond things, if she won anything, she could do what she wanted with it as long as the stake money stayed in bonds. On his death we got granny every Sunday for lunch and afternoon tea for the rest of her life two bus journeys didn’t seem to be a problem to her then.
Well that’s Grampies out of the way although they were never Grampies to me just my Gran’s dead husbands.

Being left on her own, my mum’s mother was lucky enough to own the small terraced house where they had lived for thirty or so years. But she was on her own when things went wrong she had to rely on either the neighbours or her three children for assistance. So she came up with a plan and approached my parents with her proposal. This was the early fifties, a boom post war time when people could buy a house with affordable mortgages as long as they had a ten per cent deposit. Her house was worth about four hundred pounds, so if she sold it she would give the deposit to my parents to enable them to buy a brand new three bedroom semi detached house. Her conditions were that she had the downstairs front room and a bedroom for life.
All seemed to be going well, her house was sold, the money deposited in the Post Office Savings Bank and she moved in with us into our three bed council house. It was quite a novelty for me, suddenly we had another person in the house but more importantly we had a DOG! Rover was a border collie he and I bonded immediately and he was my best friend for the next four years until he died. I was devastated.
Anyway back to the story, Mum and Dad paid the deposit and came home with news of our new house. My Dad approached Mother in Law and explained what had occurred.
“We paid the deposit on the house which was two hundred pounds and the deposit on the land which was sixty pounds”
“WHAT!! People like us don’t own land” was the reply he was not expecting.
“I want that sixty pounds back!”
When you only earned nine pounds a week that was a difficult one to overcome. But he did, he went to a loan company, paid her back the sixty pounds and struggled paying the new mortgage plus this unexpected loan. He was never friendly towards her again and my poor mother was between the devil and the deep blue sea. That situation lasted for seventeen years, but being young children we never really noticed anything. Full marks to everyone involved especially my mother who had to juggle her emotions expertly, with great success. Granny died aged only sixty nine - but an old lady.
As I said earlier my Dad’s mother came to us every Sunday. She just sat and smoked all day except for mealtimes and watched the telly. The first week of every month the premium bond winning numbers were published in the Sunday paper. She would check columns of numbers hoping that her funeral investment would pay out. It never did and she died four years after the other Granny aged seventy three again a very old lady. The ten pounds went a little way towards her funeral.
Writing this piece has made me realise that I never had a great relationship with any of my Grandparents, both grandfathers died when I was young one Grandmother lived with us and became an extension to the family and the other one came to us one day a week. So there were no outings for us, no visits to stay the weekend at grannies.
When they passed on my mum and dad were finally released from the bonds of elderly parents by which time both my brother and I were married and had left home.
They discovered a new life style together at last.