F is for family history
It was my Nana that instilled a sense of my family's history in me. When I was about twelve my grandad gave me photocopies of his parents' marriage and death certificates which helped me get started on proper family history research later, but I don't remember him or my grandma talking about their childhoods. Nana, on the other hand… When I was little we were inseparable and she was a chatterbox. I spent my pre-school days and then my weekends, evenings and school holidays with her and assorted friends and relations of her generation. Man, could they talk. Sometimes they'd natter away and forget I was there, and I absorbed favourite reminiscences and old gossip. Often though, they'd deliberately tell stories to the wide-eyed child who hadn't heard them a hundred times before.
Now and then they'd tell me what they remembered, or had been told, about older generations, in fact I mentioned a few years ago some of the family tales and phrases that had been passed down that way. Thus Nana's cousin Jo Jo described the goalkeeping skills of my great-grandad for the Atherton Codders in the 1920s, eyes shining like he could still see the pitch in front of him. I heard about Nana and Jo Jo being taken on a seaside holiday by their grandparents, and about my great-grandad's budgies in a walk-in cage in the back garden. Usually they related funny or memorable events from their own youth. Nana's lifelong friend Alice in particular told hilarious tales absolutely deadpan and was a master of pacing and scene-setting. I can still picture her landing at the feet of a surprised old couple in 1930s Derbyshire when her husband applied the brakes too hard on the tandem after a handlebar mishap.
It had been long enough since the war (forty years or more) that I got the amusing anecdotes about misadventure and misunderstanding: "Bombing at random again?" said my great-grandma, listening to the radio. "There'll be nobody left there. Where is Random, anyway?". My Nana's youngest sister using gravy browning and an eyebrow pencil to mock up seamed stockings on her bare legs. Filling the butter dish with lard to teach a small child not to filch rationed butter from the sideboard. My Royal Marine grandad getting drunk, losing his ship and having to hitch a lift on another one. Nobody talked about the sick fear, the disruption and hardship. What's the use of dragging all that up again? And yet, even though I was a child I didn't only get the polite or sugar-coated version of history. Nana was completely open with me about her brother having a different dad who her mum hadn't been allowed to marry. And about the suicide of her great-grandad about a decade before she was born.
I took these facts as they were given, crucial pieces of the story that I wouldn't find written down anywhere, but nothing shocking. It's only looking back now I'm older that I'm amazed, thinking about how in the 1980s we still referred to children 'born out of wedlock', and how much stigma is even now attached to suicide which was - lest we forget - illegal until the 1960s. Not only did my Nana happily pass this information on to me when I was still at primary school, but she knew it in the first place! Her mum got married during the first world war and openly brought with her the son she'd had with a previous boyfriend in another village. No passing him off as her little brother or an orphaned nephew, or leaving him to be brought up by someone else while she got on with her new life as many others did. And as for the story about Nana's great-grandad, she got that from her grandma Emily whose father it was.
It was passed to me as I imagine it was passed to Nana, with sadness but no shame or condemnation. Emily found her father's body and understood what had driven him to desperation. Perhaps the village doctor understood too, because the death certificate uses fancy medical terms for 'died of old age' whereas it must have been obvious what had happened. Emily clearly loved him and didn't want the truth to be forgotten. Thus, even though Emily died nearly forty years before I was born I feel a connection with her, and thanks to the passed-down story I know that her dad had his troubles but did his best. Which I'm sure she would appreciate.
F could also have been for Ford Fiesta, fireworks, fish and chips, but if you enjoyed this one you can always buy me a cuppa...
