Life can be a roller coaster ride as my Grandparents discovered!
In 1936 after years of struggling my Grandparents had to reluctantly accept that their drapers shop was no longer paying and had to close down, times were hard and it seemed that life couldn't get worse. Grandad took up a laundry round to put food on the table.Then in 1937 Grandad won a magazine competition with enough prize money to buy a large but ramshackle house for the family to move into. The house had been made into "bedsitters" and needed a bit of work to make it into a family home and with next to no money they did the best they could. There was however a large garden and Grandad soon got to work and made a beautiful garden filled with some lovely roses and fruit trees. With the advent of war, Grandad joined the ARP and in any spare time he had, set to and a lot more of the garden was made over to an air raid shelter, vegetables, fruit, chickens and rabbits but still the roses survived.
I remember playing in the garden as a small child, it was a wonderful place, full of secret paths and trees to climb.
Sadly, in the early 1970's about 10 years after my Grandmothers death, my Grandad's house was compulsary purchased and he moved in with my aunt and uncle. The house was knocked down and for many years until recent re-development, the land lay bare, except for the garden. Every summer the roses continued to bloom and one year I took a cutting, sadly it didn't take but I still have the photo of one of Grandads roses. I found the photo recently and it got me thinking that the truly good things in life can and do survive the hard times just like my Grandparents and their roses!
1 comment:
What a beautiful post, and so true.
My grandparents’ house was also lost through compulsory possession and grandad, a keen gardener was never really happy in the tiny box with its little patch of land that the council provided for them. He also grew roses but in the new garden there was only room for one. He chose to grow 'Queen Elizabeth' as Elizabeth's my middle name. Sadly, I was living in Norway when he passed away and was unable to remove and replant the rose but the memories live on.
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