What can you remember about your Grandparent's house?



Metal ashtray on a stand that the lid would pop up on so you could put the tab dumps inside.

Radio newcastle on in the background at low volume that always seemed to feature Pennine Windows adverts every ten minutes voiced by Alan Robson.

Those black leather strap ornaments with circular bronze items on that hung on the walls.
Horse brasses, used to put them on working horses whenever there was a parade

They could be bought separately so you could pretend you had a shire horse tucked away, the cosworth sticker of its day
 
Bungalow in Town End Farm
Had my own golf course at the back
Wembley on the side of the bungalow
Boiled eggs in toast
Crunchy nut cornflakes
Grandad with his snuff
Coming back from the club on Sunday afternoon with all sorts (pool tables, bikes)
Happy days ❤️
 
Four square rooms
Palmolive soap
The best soup ever
Creamola Foam
Sweet shop about 5 houses away at end of street
Getting sent there on Saturdays to get the football paper and extra to spend on sweets
Radio with strange stations listed like Home, Third and others from presumably decades before
Colour TV - they had one long before us
 
The outside toilet and coal house at the bottom of the yard, both turned into sheds. Full of screws and bits of wood. He was a joiner.

The greenhouse he built next to them, full of tomatoes that always seemed green, in grow-bags that were yellow.

The cold bathroom, where everything was blue, including the cold air.

The kitchenette, which seemed massive, where he once hid some football stickers in a metal sugar bowl for me, and I checked it secretly every week after that.

The kitchen wall where he hung the souvenir tat from Berlin I brought him when I was 13, hiding how much he definitively didn’t want anything German up there.

The dining table, where my gran is serving her home-baked apple and blackberry pie. It’s probably about 1980, and she’ll be gone in a year or two, but that taste lives on.

The living room with its brown carpet and browner furniture, the wooden record player with wooden speakers, and the only flash of real colour, his budgie, Beauty, whose cage sat on my Gran’s brass hostess trolley. That bird used to play football with a ping pong ball, then sit on his shoulder or scratch at his bald head. I remember its cuttlefish, and little brown and white poos.

The one bedroom, with my Gran’s vanity table with her wigs hidden in a drawer (while she was dying of bowel cancer). If my brother and I visited, he’d put out a bucket for us to use as a toilet, and I never could work out why, until I realised that was just what you’d do if you’d lived without running water until you were over forty.

The hallway, with three flat caps and a trilby for special occasions (he never left the house bare-headed), and in latter years the photo of me at university that he took to show the woman in the newsagent’s on Roker Avenue, and then his walking stick toward the end.

The glass front door, canopy (I learnt that word there), no 84, and the pebble-dashing that we used to pick at. I still turn my head to see it whenever I drive or walk past nowadays. I could knock on the door still, but…
 
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Both sets of my grandparents slept in separate beds, each had their own room. Was that common? I remember there was a larder in the kitchen even in the early 80s. I always remember my nannas sister when we went for 'Sunday tea' had a cupboard full of M and S crisps and biscuits that was luxury back then
 
Every Saturday afternoon in the early 1970's, my Gran, & Granda, my Mam, Dad, brother, aunties, uncles, and cousins, would crowd into my gran & granda's living room, and settle around the telly, to watch World of Sport Wrestling.
We were avid grapple fans, and each Saturday, one of the grown ups would buy a couple of dozen pork pies, and a crate of beer, and we'd be happily scoffing pies, guzzling tea/beer/pop while loudly cheering on our favourite wrestlers.

Mick McManus, Adrian Street, Crybaby Jim Brraks, Jackie Pallo, Kendo Nagaski, & Giant Haystacks, were always the boo boys, whilst Big Daddy, Bert Royal, Steve Veidor, Catweazle, Les Kellett, 'Strongman' Alan Dennison, Pat Roach, & Johnny Kwango, were always cheered by us.

Happy days and priceless memories.❤️
 
My nana owned a guest house in Alnwick. I always thought of her as an "old lady" even though she was only 54 when cancer took her in 1964. My fondest memories of her are the Christmas days at her place, where the huge tree ( probably only 6 or 7 foot) in the bay window was always lit with candles. No such thing as health and safety back then ! My grandad never settled after coming home from the war, and went off to live in London, although he visited evey year until he died in 1983. He always had a pocket full of sweets which made him very popular with us kids.
Now I've got something in my eye.....
 
Both sets of my grandparents slept in separate beds, each had their own room. Was that common? I remember there was a larder in the kitchen even in the early 80s. I always remember my nannas sister when we went for 'Sunday tea' had a cupboard full of M and S crisps and biscuits that was luxury back then
It’s more common than you think this day and age
 
I think you are looking into this a bit much. I really don't think my nana and grandas buying the Sunday Post had out to do with sectarianism. They weren't religious and certainly weren't bigots
My nana said It was a good read
You could pick it up all week
Along with the peoples friend
 
Pretty much everything I was there last week. However as a kid growing up I was there all the time, they had an allotment at the end of their garden, so I spent a lot of time starting from just digging holes with my grandad to actually listening and learning how to grow vegetables. I remember lines of potatoes, carrots, sprouts, and greenhouses full of cucumbers and tomatoes, there was also a random huge patch of rhubarb. Looking back gives me a lot of respect for him. It's all been turfed now they are in their 80s, and still gives them a lot of enjoyment having such a large outside space.
 
Was at me nanna's bungalow today. So much is still the same as when I was a kid.

She's 95 now and broke her hip a couple of years ago, she doesn't cook now - all ready meals and that. It occurred to me a while ago at random I'll never have her Sunday dinner or Yorkshire puddings again. She made the best puddings, always perfect and exactly how I like them. Best gravy too (sorry mam).

Will always remember Sundays at me nanna's. Dinner, me dad and uncle John playing Subbuteo in the dining room (and us ruining it for them), playing football in the garden with them and me cousins, then a spread of sandwiches and homemade cakes etc, cream horns, brandy snaps.... Dad's been gone 19 years now and my grandad 25. When I go round I can still see them there.

Gweat memowies.
 
They lived in the waterworks house at ryhope,used to absolutly love Sundays up there for tea the days before sky and the internet running riot in the grounds can remember playing cricket with my granda and dad at the side of the house on the grass and my grandad swung for the ball and the bat come away from the handle and went through the living room window where the the family were sat.
 

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