Things that remind you of your grandparents

And the music. They loved the big band swing music. My grandma particularly liked Joe Loss and Glenn Miller, I really remember her playing songs like "Pennsylvania 6-5000" "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and us jumping around to it in their house

When I first went to work at my book place they have a noisy printer on the shop floor

When I heard it I was taken right back to Saturday afternoons where my Grandad would listen to the football scores as they came off the teleprinter (on tv)

I keep thinking of more!
Whenever we were ill (ill enough to be in bed) my grandma would insist on sending Lucozade and a bunch of red seeded grapes. To her they would cure all ills. I hated the seeds!

Linen and lace antimacassars hanging over the tops of their armchairs. And I think they had similar arm protectors on the chairs too. I sometimes see antimacassars in charity shops and it immediately reminds me of my grandparents. I don't think anyone uses them these days.

Grandma took up sugarcraft in middle age and she was in great demand for intricately decorated celebratory cakes. If I ever see handmade sugar flowers I think of her.

DK123 your post made me well up. What you said about not having much but giving you the world - I identify totally.

Bike my grandpa was a terrible hypochondriac, always on his 'last legs' (and until his latter years- never ill!)- so my gran never let on because she didn't want to worry him. My dad was really embarrassed, because when they went to register gran's death, grandpa refused to accept that it was cancer , and caused a bit of a scene.
She had told him it was pleurasy.
It was comforting getting the letters- the little blue envelopes .

Cigarette smoke
Horse racing
Trilby hats
UHT milk
Stories (more exaggerated on every telling)

@Raahh, you’re about the same age as me, and your grandparents similar ages to mine. Hiding cancer, just how brave is that? My grandad did it too. My granny wrote to me every week too. I wish I’d kept the letters. You’re right, their content was generally very dull, but then fact that they were written was so comforting.

It's often the smells that remind me. The other day I bought a different pack of smoked bacon to normal and something about the smell of it was like being in a time warp.
I lost mine over 20 years ago but they're alive in my memories like I saw them yesterday.
The sight of them smiling and waving like mad at the gate when we pulled up, my grandad in his dungarees holding a spade and my grandma in her apron. My grandad digging in the garden to grow his potatoes, the smell of the tomatoes in the greenhouse, the crunch of the sandy soil and the smell of inside the coal shed and the noise it made when it rattled into the bucket as he was filling it.
The patterned carpet in their kitchen, my grandma's decorative novelty tea pot collection on the dresser, the cold dark pantry, the taste of the beef dripping chips from the chip pan.
The imperial leather soap, the pale yellow bathroom suite and the sound of the motorway through the tiny bathroom window.
Their smiles, warmth and the time they spent doing things with me like painting, blackberrying, painting pine cones, showing me the same old photos I always wanted to look at, making things out of old Christmas cards. Chasing my grandma across the beach on the north east coast and collecting shells. Then they'd stand by the gate and wave until we were out of sight and I'd be looking out of the back window of the car waving like mad at them and trying not to get upset when we left.
They really really didn't have much at all but they gave me the absolute world.
I miss them terribly. I keep my grandad's old ash tray on my coffee table, I always find myself compulsively drawn to the yellow sticker section in the supermarket because of them and because the way they were so frugal had a big impact on me. I keep a budgie because I love them and became used to one being around. The chirping takes me back for a moment to being in their house.
I'd give anything to have them back. I admire them so much. They had so little but they were very happy, content and admirable people.

@orangejuicer - it was red plastic & wall mounted. You pressed a button on the top and a teaspoon of tea would be dispensed into the pot. It was SO exciting as a four year old!

Sterilising tablets for false teeth - my grandpa had false teeth and they used to save the Steradent tubes and fill them with any new-minted coins they got, and my sister and I would each get a tube full of shiny coins for Christmas.

Also, teas maids as they'd got one as a retirement present when my grandpa retired (in 1977). It was by their bed the rest of their lives.

Forgot to add, grandad would only have sugar cubes in his tea, never the loose sugar.

The big blue pot of Nivea cream and the pot of Astral? Cream in a green and yellow tub.
Travel sweets in a tin.
Werther's sweets.
Hand crocheted cloths for the side tables
The biggest selection of knitting needles, yarns and gold threads

Coalfires - my nanny's house in a valleys street.

Indian tea masala. My gran used to grind it at home fresh every other day and used to smell of it constantly. But lately looking at DS reminds me of her too - he’s the spitting image of her.

The smell of loose leaf tea. My grandparents had a tea leaf dispenser in their kitchen & I was allowed to press it when I visited.

Blue baslidon bond writing paper.

In 1990, I went to university. There were no phones, only pay phone you could ring out on, so we relied on getting post - big highlight.
I was always close to my dad's parents growing up- and for 3 years, every week, my gran would write. She had arthritis, so her writing was shaky. Grandpa would do the envelopes. Blue Basildon bond paper. Once a month, I got £5.
This continued until 2 weeks before I left- I found out she was really ill. She died the day before I got my degree result, she had lung cancer, but had kept it from my grandpa for ages. She was 73. Grandpa lived til 2007, he just missed his 90th birthday.

I kept those letters for 20 years, ,until I sadly got a leak in the room they were in ,and they got damaged.

(There were very dull letters, by the way- mostly full of people who had died, that that I had never met ).

My other granny is still alive (much younger, she was only 90 last year). When she goes- I think it wil be the smell of Coty L' Aimant that will remind me of her. And her knitting. She still knits.

I utterly adored my grandfather. He ignored his cancer so as not to worry anyone, and died 2 weeks after telling his brother In law, who was also his best friend. He walked for leisure and cycled for local transport (despite driving until he died), and was pretty straightforward. Fought in WW2, called up at 19. Married his sweetheart on leave and had 3 children. Trained as an accountant, got the train to London everyday and retired at 50, just before I was born. He instilled in me a love of the outdoors, and my need to “stretch my legs and eyes” every day. We used to walk miles round the Sussex lanes and South Downs, with a little gold coloured travel sweet tin, collecting whatever was interesting or seasonal - acorns, birds egg shells (never whole eggs!), holly berries, flint... at this time of year the first catkins on the trees remind me so much of him, although I’m old enough now that I only had him for less than half my life. A solid, stoic Edwardian fellow, with Brylcremed hair and a selection of hand knitted cable jumpers in a variety of earthy colours. There is a saying that women marry their fathers, but there is a great deal of my grandfather in DH.

Lurpak on thick, white toast.
Optics (they had a bar in their living room in the 80s!)
Playing cards

I miss them

For food - scrambled eggs with cheese, skinless sausages, Werther's originals, chips and gravy, corner beef hash! And old school Saturday night TV - Stars in their Eyes, Catchphrase, Gladiators etc. Also flowers, especially daffodils!

@YewandOak my mum still has her MIL's glass powder bowl and a tray, and various other dressing table bits. My mum is 85 and will have had them for 50 years or so!

Salad = A lettuce leaf dripping with water, a whole, uncut tomato, half a hard boiled egg and a huge dollop of Heinz salad cream

Chip pan

Watching Blockbusters with Bob Holness

Blackpool Illuminations

Grandad’s home grown mint and the smell and of his shed on a hot summer day

Lucozade when we were poorly whilst watching Pebble Mill at One

And as at least one PP has already said - Imperial Leather soap!