What lovely things do you remember about grandparents?

My Grandma would always make us a hot drink (either ovaltine or hot chocolate) with chocolate biscuits for dunking before bed. They used to look after us and our 2 cousins for pretty much the duration of the 6 week holidays plus most other school holidays. They let us build dens using the blankets in the garden, and we put makeshift hammocks up tying them to the fruit trees. West Indian grandparents, they weren’t to be messed with but they were so lovely and patient with us, took us out for pizza and took us to the park for the whole day, set up with picnic blankets and enough food to sink a battleship.
When my grandad was still working he came home on a Friday with a double decker and a kinder egg for each of us kids.
They had a massive house and I got to sleep in a double bed all to myself.
Just a feeling of total security, full bellies and love really. We didn’t have that so much at home.

@tinselvestsparklepants you've described how I felt about mine, a safe place ❤️ love this

These are fab! Great thread idea

My granch was my favourite person in the world and I’ve never felt quite the same without him.

I was blessed with 26 years of his company where we’d go on little outings with me pushing him in his wheelchair, or sit for hours listening to his stories of life, putting the world to rights etc.

As a child one of my earlier memories was having a bunch of teeth removed and him feeding me soggy biscuits off a spoon 😂

I still think of him almost every day

i hope my own children will be blessed with similar memories to cherish

As my maternal grandfather died in 1926, and grandma in 1949, I never met either of them. I can very dimly remember once meeting my paternal grandparents in the late 1950s, but couldn’t understand a word they said in their strong Geordie accents!

My Nan
So much. "Polishing her bras(s)". Saying "two!" And holding up two fingers. Sweets from the sweet tin before you went home. Sending me rock buns by post to university. Talking about all sorts. Watching silly telly. Watching Taxi Driver. Her knitting. The smell of her house. Her cuddles and laughter. Dancing in her kitchen. Spaghetti Bol from square aluminium saucepans. She died 5 years ago aged 102 and I think about her nearly every day. She was my safe place.

Grandad taught me to play cards, I can read cards very well. DH when we first met taught me rules of new card game, within a couple of hands I was thrashing him.

Grandma meticulously tidy and marmalade sandwiches

Playing cards. Trumps and 'runs and trials'. I sat on the floor and we used a stool with some kind of animal skin as a table.

The smell of cheap curry powder. My nana hated curry but unfortunately lived behind a factory that made flavourings. Oddly fond memories of her pottering about cursing the curry factory.

My Granny used to buy Kelloggs Variety Pack for me to have for breakfast, but she used to open the boxes carefully and then afterwards reseal them so we could use them to play shops.

She made the best flapjack known to man and wore wonderful hats everyday.

My dad doesn't like my sons name so jokingly calls him "tom" And my little boy calls him "bear"...

I find it so sweet and know to my dad it's their own little "thing".

Edit- dad hadn't heard my sons name before and us a bit old fashioned so it was a bit of a joke him saying he'll call him Tom, he does actually use his name!

My grandma lived in Australia. All year she used to collect freebies from shops and fairs and so on and made a parcel to send me at Christmas. It was so exotic and unusual. I remember a wonderful notebook she got from her bank that had a picture of a galah on it.

My maternal Grandfather lived with us until he died when I was 5.

I used to roll his cigarettes. I was excellent at it 😆

My dad would have murdered him if he had known, my parents were very anti smoking. My mum used to take him to the bottom of the garden three times a day to smoke.

Oh my! This thread has me in bits! My grandparents were amazing. So many happy memories.

My maternal grandfather was a complete hero, the gentlest soul. He died 4 years ago and I miss him every day. My grandmother has had a stroke and is in a home, the surprisingly saddest part for me is that she no longer says my name. She calls me a lovely word relating to my work but it hits me like a brick every time she doesn’t use my name.

I was very lucky to have so much time with them. Always ice lollies in the freezer. What I wouldn’t give to sit by Grandpa on the sofa and hold his hand.

I absolutely adored my paternal grandparents.
One of the many things I remember fondly is that each grand child had a little patch of garden and we would help my grandparents plant flowers. I loved strawberries as a child and my patch had lots of strawberry plants.
My Nan also used to work at McVities and my favourite biscuits were Jaffa cakes. Every time I saw her she would always make sure she had a couple of boxes of them just for me.
They were wonderful. My grandad died in 2012 and my Nan in 2016. I never had a good relationship with my mum and my Nan towards the very end of her life told me I was like her daughter really.
Grandparents are so important.

So much. Was practically joined at the hip to my maternal grandmother.

Baking together, usually biscuits and apple pies, sewing, knitting and holding my hands out while she wound yarn.

Climbing into bed with her in the morning when we stayed at hers, before my parents and siblings woke up and her reading to me. The smell of a new book - she taught primary school and we tested out new books before she read them to her class.

Going to church together.

Playing cards. Learned so many games and how to play patience.

Gardening.

So much more. I still miss her

My nana figure was my great aunt ( complicated family ) and she let me write stories on her typewriter which I loved, felt so grown up! She also used to let me have a tiny glass of sherry ( I think it was watered down) as a treat 🤣

I wasn’t that close to my paternal grandparents but I still have fond memories of my grandfathers artists studio, and his obsession with British birds. He taught me loads and to this day I still can tell what a bird is by it’s song. My Nan used to bake with me in her kitchen. They had a weeping willow in the garden and I loved playing under it.
My maternal grandparents were very involved in my childhood, I was the only grandchild for about 13 years and they adored me. They’d take me and my mum on holiday all over the uk each year. Every Christmas we’d spend a fortnight there being spoilt. My grandad was a quiet, proud man, an amazing chef, he loved to preserve the things he’d grown in the garden so we always had fruit in syrup, and piccalilli. My Nan loved to knit and crochet. When I was pregnant with my daughter she crocheted a baby blanket, and my Nan died about 18 months later. Even now, 20 years on, when I touch that blanket I can literally feel my nans love that she stitched in to it. It’s kept safely stored away now.

Much to my disgust I've had to put up with "in-laws" this weekend...(disgust is the wrong word really); but I've done it for DD as I want her to have these memories when shes older.

I never met my maternal grandparents. My paternal grandad I have one memore of..."he was lying in bed (likely hospital) and my uncle had picked up this white fluffy thing and put it to his face (entertaining me) saying he was Santa sad my grandad saying "that's for my feet". My paternal grandma I had until I was 9 - she was frail, I've got lots of memories of visiting her and being allowed to eat her Meals on Wheels Saturday desert and my £1 pocket money

My nan and grandads garden.

It was amazing. They had quite a large plot, over the decades they had carved out little pathways all though it. I remember being tiny and running around like it was an adventure playground.

They had all sorts of potting sheds and greenhouses and grew so much. My nan had a huge chest freezer under the stairs absolutely full of fruit pies from the fruits they grew. They grew all their own veg.

They both died many years ago now. I’m shit at gardening. I try and fail and I alway talk to them out loud, I tell my grandad that I wish he was still here. He would have taken over for me and taught me how to do it!

I was thinking about this earlier today as I was making toast for DD. My grandma made the best toast. She wasn’t a great cook and it was a Christmas tradition to have thick, lumpy gravy and burnt roast potatoes but her toast was amazing. Everyone says the toast after labour is the best toast ever but it didn’t compare to my grandma’s. I was a bit sad thinking DD will never taste the best toast ever.

One granny, we used to go there a lot in school hols etc while parents worked, she used to just let us play while she did whatever household stuff she did. She was quite strict but hands off. Odd combo really! But I remember her teaching me to make a pasty (we're Cornish) I was about 4 or 5, I had to stand on a dining chair to reach the worktop. She's still alive, and she sent me home from dinner at her house a few years ago, with some cake on a plate. And I've kept the plate because it's one of the ones she taught me to cut around to get the pastry circle. I'm naughty, but she's not getting it back! she also used to give us sugar cubes when she made a cup of tea. They seemed really posh - I didn't know anyone else that bought cubes.

The other granny was completely different. She used to crawl around in her garden with us looking for fairies. Take us blackberry picking and we'd never bring any home, just eat colossal amounts straight from the hedge. She always had grapes, I used to stand and eat a whole bunch while I talked to her on the kitchen. Years later she told me she didn't like grapes, but always bought them if she knew I was coming. She always always had cake in a tin in the cupboard. We used to go the supermarket and buy weird exotic fruit we'd never heard of and plant the seeds - and they'd grow! She could grow anything. Her house was full of plants and weird nik naks and half finished craft projects. She died in her 90s and I have a half finished tapestry I remember being in her living room all through my childhood. I'm going to finish it for her.

Everything, every single thing. I loved them more than I've loved anybody other than my DC. I miss them so much

My very tough and strong grandfather had a huge sharp knife that he used to remove splinters, completely painlessly. He was a woodworker and worked in the mills so he knew his way around splinters.

DD never met him but I told her he trained me and so she 'remembers' him too whenever she has a splinter.

I was very close to my maternal grandparents who gave us so much happier and richer a childhood than we would otherwise have had.

They had one of those VW camper vans with a loud air-cooled engine. They travelled all the way round Europe in that thing, including to some regions which were then behind the feared iron curtain. Gran always brought me back a doll in national costume. You could hear them coming from blocks and blocks away, and we'd be waiting for them by the door or gate. That camper van was our playhouse all through childhood. It was bought the year I was born, and my grandfather didn't sell it until I was 15.

My grandfather was a skilled carpenter and a very practical man - a standing family joke was that everything in their place was on castors and that if gran stood still long enough he'd put them on her too! He loved classical music and one abiding memory is of him clanking his ladders down the street in his blue dungarees and northerners' flat cap, whistling Vivaldi. He could whistle and sing beautifully, too.

My gran was the maternal sort and a very efficient housekeeper. Her cupboard under the stairs was packed with tins (a hangover from rationing?) and the house often smelled of clean baking and laundry. She sang a lot too - old music hall numbers mainly. The stories she used to tell about the war (they lived in one of the most heavily bombed regions in the UK) were better than anything I ever read in books. Grandfather was a nature-lover: we watched David Attenborough together and he taught me every bird song He knew. I've carried that love with me through life.

She was kind, wise and maternal, I could ask her anything and she'd help me find my own answers rather than providing them for me. And he was never without a joke or a funny quip. Just seeing him made your day.

It's odd someone has posted this thread. Around two weeks ago I visited the house they lived in until I was about 12. First time I'd seen it in years, and as a child it was the only place I ever felt safe. The front garden is exactly the same. And at the back of the house, the garage built by grandfather for his camper van is still there. Precisely the same one he built, the door had very distinctive panels, painted since their time but otherwise unchanged.

Love this thread and the chance to read of others' memories too. I was so lucky to have these wonderful people in my life.

My grandad used to collect the wildlife posters you used to be able to get from the Daily Mail (I think) and send them to me - this was about 15 years ago and I still have them now 🥰

My grandparents used to take me and my Mum on holiday most years as Mum was a single parent and money was always tight. My Grandad would always buy me a rubber ring on the first day to bob along in the sea on all week. Grandad used to grow the most delicious vegetables in the garden so I remember him giving me tomatoes, peas, beans etc to taste. Playing Monopoly with Nan on Saturdays when my Mum was at work, she'd always let me win! Going with Grandad in his car to get fish and chips. Nan's ham, egg and chips that she'd cook me after school - the best! ❤️