My childhood was enriched by the presence in our home of two of my Grandparents and the fact that I had numerous great aunts who being widowed and at a loose end would stay with us often for a month or two at a time. Some of the aunts were kind some were not so kind. My Grandfather was a treasure while my Grandmother was an irascible impatient old lady who thought that children should be neither seen nor heard yet even she was full of stories to absorb a childs mind.
Throughout my childhood my health was poor and I spent a great deal of time away from school. Apart from the occasional visit from(The School Board Man) to check up on things no one seemed to mind very much. My mother was absorbed with the longed for boy child who arrive when I was five and it was thanks to my Grandfather that I was entertained ,taught and comforted while I was unwell.
He had the gift of understanding children and could play without any condescension with children of all ages, and he loved to teach. In spite of my poor health I was a restless spirited child and on my first school report my teacher had written in exasperation that I was wild and uncontrollable. Neither of my parents were concerned about this for as my father said it showed that I had spirit and would not allow myself to be pushed around. These days I would have been classed as maladjusted.
I had one saving grace, I was exceptionally clever and in spite of the bad behaviour was invariably top of my class with no real effort at all. This of course is not good for a child and my enlightened head master transferred me at once to the top call with much older children, to “Give me something to kick against” and for a time it worked.
Frequent bouts of severe ill health did not seem to cause any trouble with my ability to learn and my Grandfather had a novel way of teaching a variety of subjects,with a deck of cards.
From this old deck I learned arithmetic, history, and religion among other things. He knew that this would be more likely to hold my attention.
Grandfather had been born in to a family with aristocratic origins but very little money and he been amongst other things a soldier and a miner. He was a slender man with long tapering fingers and I used to wonder how he had managed down the pit. He was extremely intelligent ,kind and gentle .altogether a lovely man.
During the depression in the Thirties Grandpa became unemployed and so he became a professional card player,touring the large hotels in the Midlands he made a very good living by these means. While I was learning with him I too became an accomplished card player. Playing card games trains the memory which is the greatest tool of a good player and a great advantage in any walk of life.
I once ask Grandpa if he had ever cheated at cards and he told me that with so many poor players about he had never had the need to cheat, I believed him then and I have proved it since. Grandpa died when I was nineteen, a couple of months after my marriage, I miss him still.
His sister Cecilia Aunt Cissy as I called her was widowed in middle age and often stayed with us for the whole of the summer. She was small but with the same tapering fingers and delicate looks of her brother and such a sweet gentleness about her that I adored her completely. She had married a Welsh man and had lived-in Wales long enough to have acquired a Welsh accent which suited her somehow and she was full of stories of knights, fairies, battles and kings which she wove so cleverly that the characters were alive to me .
Never once did she fail to have the time to read with me of talk and I would often give her drawings I had done to illustrate her latest tale. Her son was an artist and each time he came to collect her her would bring for me a gift of paints or crayons, sketchbooks and once an easel.
There was great aunt Anne with whom my mother and grandmother would sit and reminisce by the hour and from them I learned my family history and about two dreadful wars, rationing and a Kings abdication. Much of their talk was strange pt a child but oh so interesting.
There were others who came and went and but for the attention of the elderly people my childhood might have bee pretty bleak.. I absorbed their knowledge and I thrived upon their care and I loved them with my whole heart . My parents were good people and my father did his best to spend time with me but he was working at a job as well as running the farm and he had little time for play. I was lucky to have Grandpa at home to teach me and to play with me, to mould my character and teach me courage.
Wish that every child could know my grandfather he was such fun to be with. Today is almost seems that children are afraid of the elderly,it does seem a shame for they miss so much. I
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