Nostalgia from grandparents house

[IceDiscoSkater]

I have just been thinking about all the lovely memories from being a child and staying overnight or visiting my grandparents or great grandparents houses.

Mid to late 80’s

An overnight stay would always involve being allowed to stay up much later than at home to watch entertainment shows like blankety blank or a rented VHS tape.
We got a pound each to spend at the ice cream van ( the Icey we called it ). A pound was LOADS back then , we used to get ice cream and mix ups. My parents would never have allowed this , it was SUCH a treat.

During the day at one set of grandparents we were taken up the town centre to the shopping mall and would love to go into Boots the chemist to look at all the toiletries.
Sometimes got taken to grandparents bowling club for a cheese and ham toastie , and were allowed to press the buttons on the puggy ( slot ) machines.

If I stayed at my great Grans, I was sent to the local shop with a little hand written shopping list on my own ! To go and buy and collect the small amount of shopping - this made me feel so grown up. Looking back obviously this was so dangerous for a lone child at a young age , but I loved it and was always given extra to buy a Twinkle comic.

We picked raw rhubarb from the garden and GP let us stick it in sugar and eat it raw.

I remember their avocado bath suite and they used to buy us Matey bubble bath and it was such a treat to get to use the fun bottles.

Just lots of lovely memories...

All just little simple things we remember but seems these days the little things are things that will stick with us the most

Getting nostalgic on New Years Eve

I think these are all lovely.
It’s making me smile because all the things we are remembering fondly are the little things , they didn’t cost much but were so special.

I’m hoping my DC will also remember all the little things we do with them.

Memories to pass on down ...

( I promise I’m not usually as nicey nice as this it’s just all lovely as a nice wee break from doom and gloom news )

@MrsDThomas Yes to Teasmaid too ! It was my great gran who had one in her bedroom !
I was fascinated with it !

@cortex10 Just googled candlewick bedspread ! Yes it was that kind of thing.

My grandma died in January. I miss her so much

She lived near the beach so we would walk there and catch the bus back. We would climb the fence in her garden to get to the footpath to the beach, always felt a bit naughty scaling the fence instead of walking round! She'd do lovely lunches, and didn't mind me picking every scrap of fat off my ham before eating it - in fact she would do the same - she'd decide we should eat 'fruit' and cut up an orange into circles... and dump about half a pound of sugar onto it so it was all crunchy
She'd let us play with her make up, and crawl around in the garden with us and look for fairies, and buy weird and wonderful exotic fruit from the supermarket and plant the seeds to see if they'd grow. (they always did, she could grow anything!) she'd play twister with us, and always had cake. I'd give anything to stand in her kitchen and eat all her grapes again - I only found out as an adult that she would buy them on purpose when she knew I was coming, she didn't even like them!

Ooh her singer sewing machine, the sweetie tin, a tea towel with cats on it. Other grandparents we saw less but helping grandad in the garden

Candy striped flannelette sheets. Bedwarmers, record player in a wooden cabinet with space for the LPs on one side, Chappie dog food. Lime fizzy from the milkman.

I too used to love staying with my grandparents. My brother and I would have dinner on the coffee table sat on foot stools in front of the TV. I remember watching Nanny, Minipops and various game shows. Findus Crispy Pancakes and home cooked chips and R Whites lemonade.

They had a gas fire but the coal looked real and was quite modern at the time and I loved sitting by it. They had their own chairs they always sat in. Lots of brass ornaments and big old pictures on the walls. I would sleep in a camp bed at the foot of their bed which I loved. My grandad made up wonderful bedtime stories where he would always rescue me from somewhere. So special they were.

@Hollybutnoivy

Nothing was too much trouble and I always felt so special, loved and safe. This. I miss this feeling so much and I am sorry my children haven't had the same.

Wow yes. Me too.

Someone should make a book of all these. The fondest memories
.

My paternal grandparents lived in an old cottage that was split lengthwise. They started off doing b&b but then did holiday lets.
The let side had 2 bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen, a front room and a conservatory. "Our" bedroom had 2 single beds, a wardrobe a little chair and a commode. The walls were thick enough that I could sit and watch the world go by behind the curtains. Spiders everywhere, freezing cold bathroom that had a 2 bar heater on the wall. The dining room hadba parkray and so did the front room. The dining room had patio doors with a catflap in than led to the conservatory, the kitchen was off the side. In the conservatory wall was a tunnel with a catflap at the end. There was also a 50p meter.
On "their" side they had a front room, dining room, 2 bedrooms upstairs, a long conservatory which led to a kitchen and shower room. They had an outside well.
They lived at the top of a valley and everytime a jet went over they rattled the house. My grandad used to make the pins for the feathers on bearskin hats, many happy hours were spent bending wire into shape on a contraption that my grandad made.
My grandma was epic at knitting and crochet, she taught me both.
Whenever we went to stay, the first meal we always had was a weird mix of minced beef, spaghetti hoops and egg. Not my favourite meal but because it was my grandma I ate it.
They got their milk from a farm down the road, it was pasteurised and had green lids. We used to go down and watch the cows being milked.
Down the hill was a biscuit factory, where I used to get a tin of mint humbugs.
My gran couldn't make pastry to save her life but her victoria sponges were always light and fat.
I live remembering my paternal grandparents, they were so much less complicated than my my maternal ones.

When we used to arrive, we would run in and go to the "bonboniere" and get a Foxes Glacier mint out. I thought it was the height of sophistication to have a bonboniere full of mints and dreamt of having one as a grown up. I don't even like mints!

My grandad used to creosote his garden gate every summer - I miss that smell! We had the best Boxing Days with them, so much fun, the best people I've ever known and I miss them.

Stone hot water bottles warming the bottom of the comfiest squishiest soft flannel-sheeted beds piled high with heavy woollen blankets.

At Christmas, a little saucer containing the toffee penny and toffee stick (my favourites) from the Quality Street tin left beside my bed during the night for me to wake up to.

Mashed bananas with cream of the milk and brown sugar for tea.

Lying in bed feeling warm, cosy and safe listening to the sound of telly blaring downstairs and watching lights from cars passing on the road outside reflecting on the bedroom walls. We lived in the countryside where it was always pitch dark at night but granny lived in the city and I always found the car lights in the night so comforting for some reason!.

So many many memories. Miss you granny.

I cried tonight missing the Hogmanays I had as a child. We’d stay at my grands then walk a few streets away to my aunt and uncles house which would be heaving with people and sweets, crisps, drinks . Watching scotch and rye and Taggart on telly. We’d be allowed be very diluted babycham or snowball at the bells (mostly lemonade with a tiny drip of alcohol). The adults would get drunk whilst the kids ran riot and about 3 am we’d wander back to my grabs house to go to bed. The smell of frost and coal smoke takes me instantly back.

My gran had a big collection of Mills and Boon beside her spare bed. I loved them back then. Load of nonsense now of course

The button tin, the gold trolley that wheeled in mashed banana sandwiches to eat whilst watching a black and white afternoon film, ice cream between 2 wafers, beer shampoo and Agree conditioner, the sunburst clock, being read Enid Blyton whilst in a bunk bed, Sugar Puffs for breakfast (not allowed at home!)

My nan meeting us of the train in London to take us to her house for the week. The shopping trolly that me and my brother both wanted to pull. Being given the job of polishing all the silver in the special cabinet. Omg I loved my grandparents so much.

My nan died over 30 years ago but I have vivid memories of the time I spent at her home. I used to stay for a few days every summer with my sister and cousin. There was a scary portrait of Beethoven and his eyes followed me around the room. I used to sit under the table with the red cloth, when nan was in the kitchen, listening to the radio and the big grandfather click ticking.

At the end of the garden there were woods and cornfields for proper adventures though I never did find the Faraway Tree. In the long garden, I was sent out with a jar and a net curtain to catch cabbage white butterflies. There were loads in the late 60s. The house,apart from the living room, always seemed cold and upstairs was rather terrifying for some reason. I remember that watching tv just wasn't a thing when I stayed and of course there were only a couple of stations anyway and probably little for kids. We played cards a lot and I found my granddad's old PG Wodehouse books as well as battering away on the poor piano.

The best place was the massive shed with its strings of onions, weird sacks of mystery stuff and the amazing mangle which I adored. I can still conjure up the scent of oil from the mower, vegetables and damp wood.

Happy memories and also a bygone time.

Watching the Waterbabies. Eating supper (usually cheese and biscuits, or toasted crumpets). Hot water bottles. Eiderdowns. That special smell.

I miss them all💔

Following, will comment tomorrow, too tired 😴

What a lovely thread.
Saturday tea at the Formica table on a silver tea stand.
Sleeping in my grandparents bedroom on a camp bed and counting the spots on her nightdress in the morning.
Grandad watching the football scores being read out in that rhythmical way - 'queen of the south, nil' etc.
Watching catchphrase and baywatch!
Avon powder puff.
Fish and chips from the fish van.
Fetching coal from the coal bunker and being allowed to top up the fire.
Bookie (betting man) coming round on a Saturday and giving me a stick of juicy fruit.
Screwball scrambles from the ice cream van.

My maternal grandmother lived at the bottom of my road & used to mind [my siblings &] me a lot when I was wee. She had “Peter Pan” & all the “Just So...” stories by heart so those always make me think of her - & my introduction to Pooh Bear and his friends was via the copies of the books she bought for herself/was given as gifts as a teenager in the 1920s. (I also read Proper Fairy Tales in a beautifully-illustrated Victorian book - I was a very careful wee girl so I was allowed to read it by myself from a young age...) The smell of rock buns cooking (the thing we baked with her most often) always takes me back to her home. My paternal grandparents house was much bigger, across 5 floors (not including the attic & cellar) that my grandad had renovated himself. The soft smell of fresh earth in the tiny conservatory where grandad would tend to tiny blooms too fragile yet to plant out (the garden was beautiful); granny’s typewriter in her office; imperial leather soap in the bathroom; the dollshouse grandad built... & always a faint smell of tobacco, as grandad started smoking during WWII & only gave up the year before he died, over 60 years later. Granny fussing about whether we’d REALLY eaten enough.

Like PPs have said, the best & most important thing was feeling so safe & so loved. It’s something that can’t be underestimated.

@NerrSnerr
Would it have been a carriage clock your granny had? You can get some that have a type of pendulum in the bottom, either in the standard sort of casing, or under a glass bell. Am attaching a couple of pictures. (My maternal grandmother had a “plain” carriage clock on her sitting-room mantelpiece over the gas-fire that we were Never To Touch nor even to stand to close to...)

I always stayed at Gran's on Saturday night.
Gran took me to Pensioner's Bingo, I was the only child there.
I slept in the double bed with her, I remember her making shadow shapes with her hands against the wall.
There was a coal fire in the living room with a soft, red rug in front of it, I was allowed to make toast in front of it.
I was sent to the shops with a string bag to get the messages.
To eat we had fried spam or perhaps mince and tatties with tinned peas, and sometimes a shop bought trifle which had 'cream' which looked like shaving foam.
I was always given a comic, 'Look and Learn' and a mars bar.
My dad and sister came round in the afternoon and we played cards then had fish suppers for tea, and a box of Quality Street.
Happy days.

Spent so much time with my grandparents they were like parents.

I can still remember the wallpaper and coziness of a proper armchair in the kitchen which had an open fire. As a very small girl I often slept in the big bed with grandma and they had a bolster and a silk eiderdown on top of the blankets and under the bedspread which was called a counterpane.

Grannie was usually in bed by 9pm (farmers) and we would go up together and I'd have warm milk with a spoon of sugar in it and nutmeg on top. She read me one of my favourite books called the dromoderie and the pictures of the dromoderie were felted.

She taught me to ride when I was very small and was a very fine horse woman and very patient with me despite being very no nonsense.

She had her hair set on Tuesdays and Fridays and in the holidays I often went with her. She and grandad had a gin and It at weekends before dinner and I sometimes got a dash of It in my lemonade with a slice of lemon and a cherry because in those days I didn't like the olive.

Wish I could turn the time back to the 60s. She died when dd was a baby and never knew her but I gave dd her name and she is uncannily like grandma.

Love this thread. My Dad's Mum made us jam tarts with strawberry jam every time we stopped by. My Grandparents on my Mum's side always had these little Bon Maman mini jam jars so I could choose which flavor I wanted for my toast in the mornings. Homemade bread. Mr Kipling apple pies and choc ices. My Grandad having his afternoon nap in his chair.The Sound of Music that they always paused just before things got bad so I never knew about any of the sad/scary bits when I was little. They'd take me to garden centres at Christmas and we'd pick out bits to make handmade gifts with. Fluffy towels and a bath towel of my own and a big bed with warm, heavy blankets to sleep in when I stayed over. Special days out and walks through a bluebell wood down the road. I just remember feeling how much they loved me. I felt it to my absolute core, even when I was tiny. I miss them so very much.