Some of my earliest memories in life involve Nan. I can still remember crawling on Nan’s kitchen floor as a toddler, next to her cat Tammy. I can still remember visits to the old house in Cheshunt, and later to Clacton.
I briefly went to the local Brooklands Primary School, where she was a dinner lady. Not to suggest she was biased in any way, but my school lunches always seemed to be double the size of the other children’s! Indeed, Nan was the best cook I’ve ever met. It seemed that no matter what she cooked, it was perfect.
As a teenager, I would spend summer vacations with them. Those visits would be the highlight of my year. I still fondly look back to those days; playing jigsaw puzzles with Grandad, with Nan in the kitchen listening to BBC Radio 2, later Radio Essex, or going for a walk on Sundays together. Nan and I would go to town together; even in her late 60s she would frog-march halfway across the town!
But the memory I am most grateful of all for is this. I grew up overseas. Nan used to buy me Beano and Dandy comics and post them to me every couple of weeks, and some packets of Skittles for good measure. As far as she was concerned, she was just being a good grandma by thinking of her grandson. Yet, those sweets and magazines meant the world to me. They were a taste of home and a ray of sunshine in a time of darkness.
With love from afar,
Matthew and Tamaryn + great-grandsons James and John
Matt
07/12/2019
