[garinda]

I was the first born grandchild on both sides.

My paternal grandfather was killed in June 1944, in Normandy, before my mum was born. So none of us sadly knew him.

His wife, my Nan, was only thirty nine when I was born. She looked younger than even that age, and was always very glam. She was hard working, as she had to be, after being widowed at twenty with a family to bring up.

In the school holidays she used to take us, me, my brother and our cousin, to all the places she used to have adventures as a child. The Plantation, the Swanee, the Twenty Steps, and the Fairy Caves. She would always be the first to swing over the brook on a rope, and we just laughed and had fun all day long.

When I went away to college I couldn't have survived without all the food she used to send me back with, after weekend visits home. I'd also get regular little notes, with money wrapped in strange things, so the Scouse posties wouldn't nick it.

She died in the mid nineties. I was up from London for a visit. She'd had indigestion all weekend. On the Tuesday afternoon she'd been to a tea dance. We recieved a call to say she'd been taken to the hospital, by the time we arrived she was dead. A great shock, but painless, and she'd had fun untill the last day of her life.

She loved her family unconditionally. She would have died for her two daughters, and her three grandchildren. Everytime I was home she hugged me so tight, because she didn't see me everyday like her other two grandchildren, and squeezed me hard for fear she'd never see me again. She loved, and was loved.

My other grandparents I was close to when I was small. They moved to the seaside when I was seven. I used to go and stay with them in the holidays, but I was never as close to them as my Nan.