At Nannan and Grandad's

Gill and I used to go and stay quite often at Nanna's. She really loved having us to stay and made such a fuss of us.

Behind the house was the Heath that gave rise to the name Colney Heath. We used to roam all over it for hours. There was a little stream that ran through it and that made it the perfect playground. I once cut my foot on some glass in the water. Gill ran back to the house to get Grandad. He was a little disabled, and wore a raised-soled boot on one foot which made him rather limp. But he carried me back piggyback and Nanna patched me up.

There is a Village Hall at the end of the row of cottages. Gill and I used to climb onto a little store with a black felted flat roof and sit in the sun there, talking for hours. I looked at the Hall a while ago on Google Earth, and it was still there, although if you look now there has been an extension to the hall on two sides which has swallowed up where the little store was. 

Gill could climb up anything. It took me a bit more effort but I was taller. I could never climb trees, but Gill was always up them.

One weekend when we were staying there was a funfair on the Heath. Grandad gave us threepence each to spend. I don't remember what I bought but I do remember the stalls. There was one of those things where you hit the knob with a hammer and try to get the shuttle to run right up and ring the bell. I don't think Grandad had a go but we stood and watched it for a while. Apart from this there were the usual roundabouts and swing boats.

The other end of the road, going towards St Albans, was a playing field. We all went there one Saturday to watch races etc, and Dad took some photos. He was always a good photographer. Here are some of them.......

Here is me on the gate post. I remember this day and being lifted up.

Mum with Paul. Mum was a real beauty, so full of energy. In her teens she was a runner. She entered racing competitions and at 13 and 14 years was beating the 16 year olds. She had an ambition to be a gym teacher, but got married and had a huge family instead.

Back to Grandad and Nannan. Here is a photo of Grandad and his pride and joy.....a soft top Morris

Looks from our clothes as if it was the same day as the fete.

Grandad died two years later, and Nanna had a nervous breakdown. The house was disbanded and after she came out of hospital she went to live with Aunty Anne Pounder at Handside Lane, Welwyn Garden City....her older sister. I think the last time I actually stayed was before I started school. (I started school on the day I was 5.....the 6th September 1954.)

Sometimes in the summer Dad used to cycle to see his parents at weekends and Gill and I used to cycle with him on our tiny bikes. Gill was very slow and I remember suggesting we got a long stick with a pin on it to poke her with! The trip through the back lanes was more or less flat riding. It was a pleasant ride. Three and a half miles each way. I think we did rather well to cycle that before I was 5, and Gill was a year younger. Dad used to have Paul on a little saddle on the crossbar. Like this.....

The M25 now almost cuts through the very quiet country road we used to use. How times change......

Grandad always used to buy us tins of John Bull Humbugs. They often visited us at weekends and he always brought a tin with him. I can remember him bringing them to Harvey Road, London Colney, where Dad and Mum moved to when they had just got Gill and I and were expecting Paul. This was the downstairs front room of 1, Harvey Road. In that room was a double bed, and two cots (in the fireplace alcoves) for me and Gill. Under the front window was a table where Mum did everything. There was a bowl for washing up. I don't recall how she cooked as I don't remember a stove. Perhaps she used the kitchen of the householder. I certainly remember going down into the larder under the stairs in the hallway outside our room. 

They had to manage in that one room until Paul was about 6 months old. Then we moved into a brand new council house at 4 Manor Road, London Colney. It had three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and a sitting room, dining room and kitchen downstairs. I remember Mum and Dad viewing the house before we moved in. There were paint tins in the sitting room. We moved them in front of the fireplace and sat as if we were living there. We walked there from Harvey Road. Paul in the pram, Gill and I walked. I was two and a bit, Gill was one and a bit. About half a mile....! We were sturdy little walkers!

Firstly about me.....

I'd better explain why I feel it is time to write all this down.....

Recently it became necessary for Mum to go into residential care, with Andy, as she needs 24 hour care. She has no memory now of these things and I realise that I am probably the only person alive who remembers most of it. It would be a shame to lose it, so I am writing it all down so that Mums grand- and great-grandchildren can see it.

I was born on September 6th 1949 at Brocket Hall Maternity Hospital in Lemsford Hertfordshire. The first of seven children, to Donald Keerie and Jean Barbara Keerie (neé Mathew). 

Daddy was born in Durham, the youngest of seven boys, on November 8th 1930. Only one of his brothers, Jack, survived childhood, so his poor Mum lost 5 baby boys. His parents were John Keerie, and Jane Keerie, known always as Jenny. We called them Grandad and Nannan.

Mummy, as we called her when we were children, was born on 6th April 1931 in N London. She was the second of four children. Audrey, Jean, John and Ronald.

You will notice from these dates that they were quite young when they started their family. They were married when Dad was 18 and Mum only 17, and I came along very quickly.....followed at short intervals by the rest of us.....!

Mum and Dad were living at 3 New Cottages, Colney Heath at the time, with his parents. In those days there was an acute housing shortage caused by WW2 so newly weds often stayed with parents until housing became available.

This is Dad at New Cottages. Along the back of the cottages was a drive able roadway between the backs of the cottages and the Heath. The "lavender wagon" used to come along here once a week to empty the toilets, which were just huge buckets with a seat on the top. Very very smelly and horrible to use, hence the euphemistic name of the lorry.....

Dad loved motorbikes. He used to go "scrambling" at weekends and get home covered in mud. Imagine cleaning those clothes in the days of no washing machines!

3 New Cottages was in a terrace of two-up, two-down small rented cottages. We always went through the back pathway into the cottage, along past the sheds (one of which contained the smelly loo) and went in through the back door. There was also a pathway that ran all the way along behind the houses linking all the back doors. No privacy!

Inside the back door the steep stairs ran straight up ahead to the two bedrooms. Grandad and Nannan slept in the front bedroom, and Dad and his brother slept in the back one. It was smaller because of the stairs but there was room for a narrow double bed. In one of the alcoves by the fire was a dark wood chest of drawers with Nannan's sewing stuff in. I remember rolls of ecru coloured 1 1/2" wide cotton tape with pinked edges. I have no idea what she used them for as they weren't cut on the bias, so not really much use for binding edges. Nannan used to make rugs so perhaps it was for that. She had a big vertical frame which was set up in the kitchen sometimes and I remember her making a maroon coloured rug on it. That was the first time I remember the word "thrum" being used. She used to buy the rug wool ready-cut into thrums.....!

(That chest of drawers is still in the family. I had it for years, and Jessica has it now.)

Just inside the back door, behind the door, on the party wall with next door, was a mirror with a tiny ledge as the bottom part of the frame. Combs and brushes lived there. And under that was a waist-high shelf which supported a bowl. This was the bathroom arrangement for the cottage. The archway into the kitchen had a curtain to stop the draught from the back door and this also provided privacy to this washing area. Very basic conditions, but lots of people lived like this then.

On washday they would fill the copper with water from a pump along the end of the row of cottages. Mum would carry it all along the back alleyway. Every drop of water in the house had to be carried in and out. There was absolutely no plumbing in the cottage at all.

They used a "posser" in the copper to agitate the clothes. I got this picture off google.....theirs was the same. 

Some folks then used a "dolly" instead. This was a sort of milking stool type arrangement with four little legs at the end of a pole. Like this one

I don't remember that one actually so perhaps they didn't use one..

I do remember washing hanging up in the space above our heads. Dad's family were all quite short, so I think only Mum would have had a problem with it hanging down.

In the middle of the room was a big table. Other than that there was a table in the chimney corner near the window where they did the washing up in a bowl. There were a few chairs too. I don't remember where the food was kept but there was probably a cupboard under the stairs. Nanna used to shop daily or almost daily. She never used convenience foods and the only tins she bought were peas out of season. The rest of the cooking was all fresh, and used up quickly.

I loved our Nannan deeply. She loved us too. Particularly since she had only had boys. We used to stay with her often. She used to gamely try to curl my hair with pipe cleaners, but it was so straight that it used to look weird once dry. I think she was trying to fulfil my childhood wish for curls as Gillian always had beautiful curls and I suppose I was jealous. 

Vosene shampoo always reminds me of Nannan. She used to use little linen bags with rosemary in instead of shampoo to wash our hair. The smell of Vosene is similar.

She also used a white hand soap that if I catch a whiff of reminds me of her. The blind used to come round the doors with soap for sale to raise money and it smelled just the same. But I haven't come across anything similar for years now.