Snapshot memories

My grandmother holding a huge loaf in her left hand and arm, buttering the end, then slicing off a thin slice (repeatedly, very, very fast) to fill a tray with perfect buttered slices - and - at the same time, holding complex conversations with several family members.

It was automatic, she paid no attention to the bread processing - and just fascinating to watch!

My maternal grandfather was a retired police officer, a tall man who looked taller still as he always wore a hat. How I loved grandfather's hat. He actually had several, all the same style, I thought they were known as a "Trilby," but later found out that the were in fact, "Fedoras."

You will never see me without such a hat on my head. I have morphed into my Grandfather.

I have a memory of mum, pushing the big coach built pram home, filled with metal parts (aluminium?), then filing away the sharp edges from the moulds. I couldn't have been very old, 3 maybe, and my brother was 2 years younger than me, and so we still had the pram. I suppose mum was paid piecework rates.
Grandad, a shoemaker, lived with us, and dad, an engineer, was a great maker and mender of all things. I especially loved it when he was woodworking, and the beautiful, sweet smelling curl shavings, from his plane, would fall down and I could play with them.

I have a picture of my Mum carrying buckets of coal up two long flights of stairs to the top floor of the Victorian house where we lived. The coal man with his horse and cart would dump a sack of coal in the front ‘area’ (that’s what it was called) and Mum would go down with a bucket and shovel it up and carry it up up to our coal hole a bucket at a time, a cupboard over the stairs.

Every Sunday night, my stepfather got his cobbler`s stuff out and mended the family`s shoes. I can still clearly see him drawing round shoe soles on a piece of new leather, ready for re-soling them.

I remember my mother, as I snuggled down, sitting on my bed. She would recite poetry, which she knew by heart. The Lady of Shalott and Old Meg She Was a Gipsy come to mind. Another, about Robin Hood, was a favourite. Such a comforting memory of feeling loved and secure.

I often have real ‘ snapshot’ memories. Something literally pops into my mind just like a still photograph of a memory.

Not sewing related but recently my DGS in Oz asked me to tell him about my childhood and school (for homework) and as I wrote about my (very small) primary school I got such a vivid picture of the playground/garden with its rope swing.

I remember my grandma visiting every Friday afternoon bringing a home baked loaf and three little cobs - one each for us children. She also brought sweets and loads of comics for us. I also remember my grandad coming to take me out to the local playground and pushing the other end of the seesaw for me. They never visited together and didn't show much affection but these actions said so much and showed how much they really cared.

Keeping with the sewing theme, my mum used to be a 'mender' in the woollen mills.
She didn't work while my brother and I were little, but when I was maybe about 7, she resumed mending but at home - I can picture her now, working at the dining table, and the smell of the cloth, and have suddenly remembered having to sometimes help her to move the cloth in a concertina-type of motion.
Wow, I had completely forgotten about that until reading these posts!

None of my mother but strong memories of my granny sat at her treadle sewing machine, a working on another dress for one of us. And standing at the stove flipping Scotch pancakes over on the huge cast iron griddle pan. She was a fab baker and jam maker and you could smell her house before you'd got through the door. Never had drop scones like the one's that she made.

I remember coming home from school and the smell of fresh bread coming from our house. Mum would be there with both hands at the same time working dough into perfect bread rolls...no bread has ever tasted so good!