Sorry! was doing the tea, well they came and were absolutely lovely, grand daughter is so close to him, lovely to see.
so basically we all sat down and had a cuppa to relax, we invited him in the front room and he was so hesitant he said it feels weird to be allowed in there now as he never was as a child, and then we sat talking about the area and he was asking me if such and such was still here, then after a while we let them get on with filming, they followed him around as he gave a tour and commented in each room funny things that had happened, or who had been in which room, we hid upstairs for this part listening, then we swapped over and hid downstairs whilst they filmed upstairs.
I got the impression from the letter that something bad had happened, and although he didn't tell me directly what it was (not even sure they filmed it as she didn't mention anything), and I didn't really want to ask him directly " so whats the big thing that happened then". I got the impression it was to do with his stepmum.
His dad was married and also his dads brother. His mum died and so did his uncle, so it ended up with his dad marrying the aunt that was left - are you following this.... took me a while to work that out. so basically his aunt (not blood related) became his stepmum, and his cousins became his step siblings who he didn't get on with.
His stepmum didn't really like him or his siblings, and whilst in the house everything was in his step siblings favour. At one point we were in the garden and we were chatting about an outhouse that used to be there, he said that used to be my first port of call when he came home from school.... He told me his stepmum didn't like him using the front door and made him come through the entry to the back gate,and he wasn't allowed to use the toilet inside either, so im guessing whatever else happened was down to the stepmum. He told me most of his older siblings moved away to london rather than stay here with her, so he only had 1 true brother who he shared a room with.
He told me lots of things about the area that had happened - most of the damage that can still be seen today and now we know the reason why. He also told us things about the house that we'd wondered regarding the layout, for example our kitchen sticks out at the back and down 2 steps. he said that used to be the outhouse/ boiler room, so to get to it you used to go out of the house and round the corner to a separate doorway (the arch of the original doorway is still in the brickwork, we always assumed it was an old window that had been bricked up). The bedroom above it was an addition in the 60's/ 70's he thinks.
He did tell us though that when he lived here, the people who they had bought it off were doctors and they used to have a surgery here, so im wondering if that would explain the bottles, he didn't know about any drawings though, so maybe that was the people after him?
So all in all, it was a really nice visit, they were fabulous, lovely and gave us a box of chocolates which i'm about to devour with a cuppa, I've never cleaned this house so much as i have in the past 2 days, so if anythings come out of it my house is now gleaming, rather than the quick run over with a duster, and throw everything in the cupboard it's used to. After here, they went to another house about 15 minutes away where he was born, so Im looking forward to seeing the film when its done, they said they'd send me a copy. They were only here 2 hours i think, but I could have chatted away to him all day!, sorry its not more juicy, but in a way im glad