thank you for your comments about me and my armchair!
its funny how seemingly insignificant things can mean so much in such small ways.
i cycled round to see my mum today~road-testing the new basket i bought for evangeline, to take her some of my cooking apples (apple sauce and apple crumble ahoy for swampy!) and to see how the final arrangements were for my nans flat.
its funny how seemingly insignificant things can mean so much in such small ways.
i cycled round to see my mum today~road-testing the new basket i bought for evangeline, to take her some of my cooking apples (apple sauce and apple crumble ahoy for swampy!) and to see how the final arrangements were for my nans flat.
she was so stressed i ended up coming straight home and phoned around for a man with a van. luckily i found one in southampton (midway between us and Portsmouth so perfect) who is charging only £30 to go and collect and bring back here.
i also took some photos of photo's...i know! i know! we haven't replaced our broken scanner so its the only way i can 'scan' photos onto my laptop.
anyway...
the lady on the right is my nan, annie. this was taken sometime in the past five years with her friend Betty. Betty was a Canadian lady who ended up living in Portsmouth and she and nan hit it off right from the start.
this...
is nan and gramps (far right) in 1973! doesn't nan look very 1970's funky?! its lovely to have a photo of my gramps smiling. he was always a very fierce man, always seeming grumpy, but we knew it was just a cover and we knew how much he cared for us. he, like nan, in the poorest area of portsea,with his 12 siblings, his dad a fisherman, he maternal granddad a bargeman and all his other male relatives were either bargemen, fishermen, dockyard workers or mariners. he had passed to join the royal navy at the start of WW2 but they considered his position, driving the trains in the dockyard so important they would not release him for navy service.all he would say about this time was that he saw sights no man should see.
and finally...
this is my dad, aged about 21-22 when he first became a policeman, pictured outside his uncle john cushnaghan's little house in portsmouth. doesn't he look so very young? i imagine my nan must have had this copy from the time it was taken, although i have no idea who took the photo~quite possibly uncle john.