I have posted this before under a previous name. It's miles long but I don't want to shorten it. It was my most favourite place to be, I still dream about it sometimes now and my Grandad is always there.
"My nan has recently been moved to a residential home and everytime I think about her old house I have to stop myself from crying. I will never go past it again. I just couldn't bear it. I think in a way I am mourning the loss of how happy I was when I was there and how wonderful my nan (and now deceased grandad were). I can't stand the thought of someone else living there but at the same time I hope they are happy. No one should ever be sad in that house.
You don't have to read anymore because I know this will be long but I have to "talk" about it somewhere or I'll explode.
Above the front door there was a sign my dad made with their house number on it. My nan used to make us polish the brass handles and locks on the door every weekend. In the front garden there were really tall conifers which I remember playing under when I was very small, but they were cut down before I even started school. We used to use the tree stumps as stepping stones. We would ride our bikes down the back alley (god knows how it's about 2 foot by 10 foot!) because we weren't allowed to play out the front without my grandad. When we did play out the front, he would stand on the grid in the middle of the path and pretend to be a traffic policeman. He taught me how to climb to the top of the lampost at the end of the street and then I got told off by one of the neighbours who wouldn't beleive he told me it was ok.
My nan had net curtains on the front door and my sister and I (and sometimes my brother) would walk out from underneath it pretending we were a bride with a veil on. The wallpaper in the hall was that woodchip stuff and we used to try and pick the wood out but if it got caught under your fingernails it would kill for weeks! I remember when I was too small to reach the lightswitches and my grandad would tell us off if we tried to touch the plugs.
I remember my nan bathing us, her bath had a little tray over the middle of it so my sister and I would sit on either side of it and have tea parties in the bath. My nan had talc that was pink and smelled like roses, whereas my mum only used the boring white stuff. I once brushed my teeth with their arm and hammer toothpaste and never did it again!
In the kitchen there was a postcard that read "Kitchen closed due to illness, I'm sick of cooking". The fridge was always full of icecream, kinder eggs, animal bars (anything that came in threes so we all had one each and no fighting!) My nan always had polos and would cut the packet in thirds for us. We could take anything from the fridge, but were not allowed anything from the cupboards because my grandad said that you don't know what's in the bottles, it might not be what it says it is so we must always ask them first. When my nan was cooking, we would run into the kitchen, untie the back of her pinny, then run out again before she could catch us.
They had a tv in the living room and a tv in the kitchen and they would have them both on at the same time sometimes. One was slightly faster than the other so you always got an echo. Their tv aerial wouldn't work in windy weather and they could never get channel 5. In the holidays or if I was ill I would watch the channel 4 educational programmes all day! When I was older I would go round, sit on the couch next to my grandad and read a book while he watched the football. We never needed to say anything to each other. I get headaches a lot and my grandad would make me lie on the couch and his hand would fit around my whole head. He would massage my head and the headache would go away.
Their Christmas decorations were typical 70's tackyness but their fairy lights were multicoloured cinderella carriages, much cooler than ours which were just plain white.
My grandad would let me practice my handstands against the living room door and taught me how to do a slow motion backflip! I never managed to do it quickly!
They only had one bedroom and we were allowed to bounce on their bed (mum wouldn't let us bounce on the beds at home). Nan blames us for her bad back! When I was very little, they set up a campbed next to their bed for me to sleep on, but I always ended up in their bed and my grandad would sleep in the campbed. We always wore my nans nighties even if we brought our own.
In the "little room" which was just a large walk-in cupboard we would play hide and seek among their coats and try my nans shoes on.
There is a small area of the wall in their backgarden that is covered in multicoloured splats of paint from when we were paining and decided it would be "artistic" to flick the paint brushes at the paper. It wasn't till afterwards that we realised it was all over the wall so we never told nan!
There is no grass in the back garden, it was all paved over and my grandad would paint them in a checkerboard pattern. He once painted it blue and red but didn't realise it wasn't masonry paint so we all slipped over when we tried to walk outside!
He screwed a piece of plastic into the wall in the shape of a basket ball hoop for us...it said "Guiness" on the side so I'm assuming it was once wrapped around some booze lol. There were two sheds, one we were never allowed in because it was full of dangerous chemicals and weedkiller etc and the floor was rotten. There was a cobweb in the window with a dead bee in it.
The other shed was like a plastic greenhouse and mushrooms grew on the floor! My grandad cleaned it out and made it into a playhouse for us. Complete with an old telephone and table and chairs and curtains.
There was a climbing frame, a swing and a slide in the back garden but we played with the old cushions the most. They were supposed to be left on the floor under the climbing frame incase we fell off onto the paving stones but we like to build stuff with them (and nan's tablecloths).
I was never scared in this house. Not of anything. And I never had a nightmare there.
There are so many more memories but I would be here forever!"