Super Nan
Fun is not a reserve of the young - for my Nan, life started at 75.
On this day (11th September) in 1979 my Nan, Nelly Winifred Ives, aged 81, bought a new shopping trolly for £7.99 which was paid for by Betty and Jean (my mum and her sister).
A trifling piece of information, totally irrelevant and of no account to anyone else but important enough for her to write in her diary. And how grateful I am that she did.
Sitting in my book case are three small diaries, no more than a few inches tall, two black, one red, dated 1978, 1979 and 1980. The pages are crammed with handwritten notes of her daily life, mundane appointments with the dentist and chiropodist and memorable days out to towns and villages around the UK, sometimes even to Wales or Scotland and back in one day, arriving home at 6.00am.
The contents, a peak into the life of an everyday remarkable woman (as are all women) are a priceless record of social history, but for me personally are the most valuable reminder that life is there to be grabbed with both hands at any age and at any stage in our lives.
Nelly was married to a very difficult, unlikeable man. I am not ashamed to admit I didn’t like my Grandad and by all accounts not many other people did either. When I was a young girl it was hard to reconcile my kind and gentle, fun loving nan could have fallen in love with such a forbidding curmudgeon, but in later years I understood that his life and personality were changed forever by the atrocities he witnessed and experienced as a cavalryman in the First World War. Although he must have been very demanding and draining to live with, they raised four children and stayed together in their council maisonette near Watford until he died in March 1973, when I was eleven.
After his death, my Nan, then aged 75, didn’t retire to her armchair and take solace in what might have been by binge reading Mills and Boon romances, she took a sharp intake of breath, shook off the cobwebs and joined every club she could within a bus ride away.
I remember phoning her once when she was 90 and she said ‘I can’t stop, I’m going down the club to feed the old people.” She was rarely at home, either out at one of her many social clubs or on a train or coach travelling around the country somewhere on a day trip to places she never had the opportunity to visit during her marriage. Her diaries are testament to her zest for living, she had a social life that a thirty year old would find it hard to keep up with, sometimes visiting three clubs in one day. Many of the entries are delightfully, unpretentiously funny or naively charming, just like my Nan, making the diaries themselves some of my most precious possessions.
Every time I read them something new jumps out of the pages, today I realised at the back of each one she has documented the year’s telephone bills and gas and electric readings which in themselves are interesting, along with dates of birthdays, anniversaries, deaths and snippets of family history like this gem:
“Uncle Jimmy May was a Bandmaster, well known in Rickmansworth in all the pubs there. He wore a bowler hat & frock coat, very hamson. (sic).”
Right at the front of the 1978 diary there is a detailed note about a brown winter coat that she had obviously taken a fancy to in Clements, her local Department Store, but at £46.00 (about £375 in today’s money) it would have way beyond her means, living solely as she did on her state pension.
However, all was not lost. On the 1st January, she lists the Christmas presents she received the week before.
Received £38 (all but £3 from family)
Real Leather Handbag from Jean and Peter
Slippers
Bottle Advocaat
Perfume
Fancy Soap
2 Talcum Powders
2 Calendars
£9 Vouchers (Boots & Marks)
64 Christmas Cards
And, for her birthday soon after on 9th January, she was given:
£18 from family
Parker Biro
Lovely Plant
Box of lovely paper and envelopes
Bottle Advocaat (she liked Advocaat!)
Glass Vase
2 Boxes Sweets
So I like to think with her combined Christmas and Birthday money, she took the bus to Clements and bought that coat she so desired, hopefully it made her feel like a million dollars when she went out dancing down the Darby and Joan.
The snippets of daily life and accounts of days out are so many and varied there is probably enough material for several posts, but these are a few random events that either made me laugh or are just beautiful little pieces of nostalgia.
Saturday 29th April 1978
Tripped over wood in Watford Palace. Hurt knee and ribs. Manager rang me to see how I was.
23rd August 1978
Lancashire Countryside - Brooding Bronte Moorlands Tour. Including visit to Haworth and largest fish and chip restaurant in the world. £6.10.
3rd November 1978
Pictures. Watership Down. All about Rabbits.
Monday 29th January 1979
Went to Drs. Water trouble
Friday 16th March 1979
Visited Daisy after operation with toes then went to pictures to see Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Friday 4th May 1979
Going to Scilly Isles Friday - Sunday. From Euston. £19.50
Saturday 5th May 1979
Nice trip. 2 1/2 hours on ship, weather fine, sick on train early hours of Sunday morning and lost teeth (top) down drain.
Tuesday 8th May 1979
Teeth impression appointment 12.30.
Dancing was one of Nan’s great loves, something she passed down to both her daughters who danced into their later years until their legs could carry them no more. My much loved cousins, Jane and Kim (the two girls at the front of the photo above) are just the same and grab any opportunity available to dance for the sheer joy of it. Some of the happiest memories of my own mum, even when she was in the throws of dementia, are when we were dancing in the kitchen together, bopping around the island to Cab Calloway with wooden spoons in our hands, giggling like teenagers.
If anyone needs the inspiration to get out to have fun, whatever your age, here is a passage from a letter my Nan wrote to me when she was 91:
Sadly my Nan died two years after she wrote this letter, aged 93. She remained as active as ever and her brain was a sharp as pin but she died from peritonitis, an ailment that anyone could succumb to, so it was not her age as such that killed her. I have no doubt she would otherwise have still been dancing at 100.
I learnt a lot from her diaries, simple things like she was careful to look after her feet, with ‘feet appointment’ written in every couple of months. She made a note of when her children and grandchildren phoned or visited which made me think how important that contact must have been for her. It was obvious she met lots of good friends in her later years, an example to those who believe it is too late to meet new people in their seventies or eighties.
But the main message here is never give up. My Nan’s life with my Grandad must have been quite a miserable one, I know my mum used to tell me stories of how unfair and cruel he could be to his own children. His one redeeming feature was he was a very good gardener, if only he had tended to his family with the same care and attention as he did his lawn.
Thankfully, due to her own determination and willpower, her last twenty or so years were filled with laughter and fun, surrounded by friends and a family who adored her. She didn’t go to the gym, take supplements (apart from the odd drink of Complan after she had a cold), watch her weight or follow faddy diets. She didn’t buy special creams or potions, was a lifelong user of Lifebuoy Soap and smelt of Devon violets. She danced and sang, enjoyed her advocaat and Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts, swore by the benefits of boiled onions, liked nothing better than a roast dinner and brought joy to everyone she met. And she smiled, a lot.
My Nan. My Inspiration.
Lots of love,
Lindsey x
inspiring nan...whether one is a nan or not...she was a remarkable woman and a role model for ageing with energy! thanks.
What an inspiring woman!