When I was born in 1961, my parents lived upstairs in my Nana’s terraced house in Blackheath, London (at the time, not a posh area!).
Nana (my paternal grandmother) was a mother to her only child, during World War II. My Nana had few facilities. She didn’t have a bath-room and she washed at the sink. My parents never persuaded her to have a bath in her life, even though Dad built her a bathroom in our house when she lived with us in my teenage years.
My dad was a ‘war child’ – his childhood years were spent in the ‘Blitz’ in south-east London – and subsequently in evacuation to family in Manchester, with his mum – my grandmother ‘Nana’.
At the time, my mum was living in north London and was evacuated to be with her grandparents in the Welsh borders, at the ‘Old Racecourse’ on the hills above Oswestry.
As I understand it, Mum had two sets of grandparents, living next-door to each other – and were cousins of each other. A very close-knit family!
At least one of the two houses on the Old Racecourse was built by my great-grandparents, who had returned from a life as missionaries on the South Sea Isles – specifically Western Samoa – towards the end of the 19th century. The story goes that they went out to Western Samoa to replace missionaries who were eaten by cannibals. My mum has always insisted that, as missionaries, they are still remembered in a good way by the Samoans.
My maternal ancestors have it seems, for centuries, documented as much as they could, in words and pictures – including a whole chest of ‘magazines’ my great aunts and uncles, created when they were teenagers in the 19th century.
So my mum brought my up with a love of art and writing – though for fun rather than as a career choice.