MORE ABOUT GRANNY MUGWUMP

As a child I had the luck,and sometimes the ill luck to so have my mothers parents living with us. Our home was a large old farm house with big rooms,it had more drafts than your average castle and in winter no amount of fires would penetrate the Arctic character of the bedrooms.

My Grandfather was a dear,he was perfect as a grandfather in every way Granny was a different matter to be sure, and it is she who occupies my story.

Granny had been born in to a family of means, not aristocracy by any means but with her father in trade and her uncle a well known artist money was not a problem.

She had one surviving younger sister a third child much favoured by her mother had died at the age of five a grief so great that her mother never truly recovered. Some years after Granny Mugwump had died her sister told me that when the youngest sister died there mother ,in her grief had screamed out why couldn’t it have been Alice! By the “roaring twenties” Granny “Alice” was in popular demand at tennis parties and charabanc excursions,tea dances and concert parties,she was hansom rather than pretty with a pair of huge sea blue eyes which I am told she used to good effect. In her bucket hat; drop waisted dress and Louis heels she looked the perfect “Flapper”.

For her twenty first birthday she received from her parents a lovely gold chain on which was suspended two circles of gold held together with five gold balls and hanging inside the circles was a golden bird set with pearls and carrying in its beak a sizeable diamond set in gold and connected to the birds beak by a tiny golden chain. This and the matching ring that came with it were especially made for her by her parents,but being Mugwump she preferred the camera given to her by her uncle and in time she became an accomplished photographer.

She became engaged to my grandfather but appears to have had a change of heart when she was proposed to by the eldest son of a china factory owner in the Potteries,they toured around in his little car and seemed perfect for each other, but it was not to be. Her parents were strict and insisted that her engagement to my grandfather was binding and she must marry him.

It was all very romantic and rather tragic because by the time the married they both realised their mistake. However they shook down together as well as they could considering they were totally incompatible.

Life with Mugwump was interesting and often painful as she had no patience at all with small children and the “seen but not heard “ rule was applied at all times. There were times when I was a child that I wished her anywhere but with us ,her temper was uncertain at the best of times and my long hair was regularly pulled when I annoyed her.

I wish with all my heart that I had know of the events in her life that would have been enough to turn anyone’s heart to sadness and ill temper.

I remember holding her hand after Grandpa’s funeral she sat dry eyed yet desolate staring into the future,or remembering the past. I shall never know which but for the remaining years of her life,and she lived to be 100 she always spoke of Grandpa with affection,but when the photos of her days of touring with her forbidden sweetheart were before her she would fall silent and after a while she would smile,and sigh before putting them in her special box which had a lock with,the rest of her dreams.