What are your childhood memories of your grandparents' house?

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

I was schrunching some foil today and it reminded me of the Vitalite tub of milk bottle tops for the Guide Dogs (always a concept I struggled to undersand) at my DGP's house.

And the whoosh hit of tomato smell in the greenhouse.

And the tea caddy of buttom at the other DGP's house.

And the duoble loo roll holder for soft paper (guests) and Izal (unfortunate family).

And rice pudding with skin on.

And a shiny 5p coin for whomever had the smallest new potato on their plate at Sunday lunch.

Good times. Bittersweet memories.

Black and white striped sofa
Grandpa's collection of brass band LPs
Pasty making
The fact that grandpa parked his car in the garage without the handbrake on
Light brown chairs with blue plastic covers
Grandpa's shopping bag
Granny's button box and knitting

Other grandparent

Playing snakes and ladders
What Katy did and black beauty on the tv
Chocolate bars kept in unusual places for him to find with us
The organ in the front room
Carrying plates of food into the dining room to help lay up tea
Say g goodbye and being allowed one hazel nut to eat in the car on the way home
The exciting journey to and from on the only bit of dual carriageway in county, my sister and I named it "the speedway" (Cornwall was always a bit behind)

Notyummy: I also adored to listen to my grandmothers stories about ww2 and even older ones. My maternal grandmother had great scary stories of their house being searched by the nazis (granddad was hiding in the hills with the partisans) or of a relative being beaten up by the fascists. I loved those stories.

My mum and dad are fantastic with 5 year old DD and I hope she will be able to contribute some similar (albeit from a different era) memories in 30 years time. My dad makes mince pies with her every Xmas eve, and they have a big horses brass with a bell hanging in their dining room that he used to have to lift her up to ring. She is so pleased to be able to do it herself now! She stayed with them for a week in the school holidays and my dad and her spent one afternoon running round the garden with super squirters having water battles. Afterwards he rang me to tell me 'that's why I wanted grandchildren.'

Melika

Grandad's tattoos on his arms, proper sailors ones of swallows and garlands
Grandad carving roast beef on Sunday, and then beef sandwiches at teatime, white bread spread really thick with yellow butter
Watching crossroads and boxing - Grandma loved the boxing
My pyjamas being warmed on the aga before bedtime, and washing drying on the big wooden dryer hoisted above
Going bramble picking with Grandma and her hooking the best ones down with her walking stick for me to reach
Home made rosehip syrup - I have memories of drinking this at night time from a bottle with a teat so must have been only about 2 or 3?
Grandad on his CB radio - I had my own radio name and sometimes he would let me speak to ships out in the bay
The wind howling and screaming at night, the house was VERY spooky at night time
The 'front room' feeling special (and freezing!) as it was kept for best and we were only allowed in at Christmas!

Their house was magical, i still see it from time to time but it has lost its magic without them being there.

Yes, I am 41 and I still miss my grandparents, all died in my 20s

I miss Saturday night and being allowed to watch Dallas while my Granny smoked her 20 cigarettes drinking her bayleys!

Boiled egg with a spoon of butter and well salted for breakfast with a glass of cream soda (FIZZY)! M and S sausages. Cuddles and endless love, being spolt rotten.
As a teenager - tea in bed, home made fish and chips, sneaking me cash!
I will be exactly this type of Granny!

I didn't know my Dads parents, they died before I remember and I was the last born grandchild of my Moms family, so by that time, I don't think they cared anymore.'Tis sad I have no great memories, only that we never went short of apples come Autumn (but had to watch out for the worms)!

Smell of polish and fresh laundry in their house. If I dig my nose right into some of the soft furnishings I inherited from them, the smell is just there still.

Roger et Gallet fern soap

Fresh rolls for breakfast with Alpine butter and forest honey. Pretzels with butter. Sugar puffs (called "Smacks" in Germany) with warm milk in an antique porcelain bowl with fish painted on it. Little porcelain cups with blue violets painted all over them.

My hugely elegant German grandmother doing silent but deadly farts at the meal table.

Going for lunch in town, stopping by the toy shop or a posh children's clothes shop and being indulged.

Being taken into Dallmayr, a Munich institution a bit like the Fortnums food hall, to look at the lobsters and live fish in tanks.

Being read stories from Richard Scarry books in German whilst sitting on my grandmother's knee.

Playing peekaboo with my grandmother. Her teaching me to embroider, buying me stickers and letting me mess about with rolls of sellotape.

My grandfather pretending to be the big bad wolf round the back of the play house, until we screamed with pleasure. Also him taking us on Alpine hikes with little backpacks and Toblerones, going up mountains for hours and hours, and getting us all dirty.

Being fed a lot of cake.

Being tucked into bed when I had eaten too much cake, and cossetted with chamomile tea.

Very fluffy goosedown duvets.

My grandmother growing sweet peas in the garden.

Playing football with my grandfather in the garden.

Pottering around the garden with a little wheelbarrow, or a bucket, pretending to garden or do washing.

Going down to the basement to see the housekeeper at work in the laundry room, and chatting for hours even though we didn't have a language in common (I didn't speak German as a kid). She's still alive and we visit her regularly, and she does all the things with my kids that she did with me, even though she is about 90 now!

Being taken swimming in lakes.

Sadly my own parents don't do any of these things for my kids - they see them for half a day at Christmas once a year - their choice.

Have just realised I appear to have morphed into my own children's grandmother.

Mum's side:

Having to walk up a rickety iron staircase up the side of the building to get to her flat.
The smell of her hairspray
Grandad having to smoke in his special chair in the dining room and nowhere else
The glass jar of multicoloured cotton wool in the bathroom
The picture of my uncle's coast guard cutter on the wall
The wonderful wood/leather stool which my brother and I fought over as it made a fantastic camel/elephant
Orange bedspreads with tassells
The way my grandad only referred to grandma as Memsaab and deferred to her on everything.
Proper Persian rugs on the floor with holes chewed out of them by generations of well loved dogs. One of them is on my bedroom floor and its just as soft and silky as when it was made 70 years ago.
Watching my grandma dress and make her face up beautifully every morning

Dads side:

Eating chives from the garden
The Bisto tin full of clothespegs and the half of a plastic tea set that were brought out to entertain us. The doll in handmade/knitted clothes and blue striped pushchair that DD now has.
PLaying cards at Christmas
Herbie videos
Pumice stone in the bathroom
Gristly meat and bread and butter or summer fruit pudding for dessert. Homemade cheese scones to start.
My nan-nan's home made clothes that she had made out of upholstery material (or so it felt like). I have never seen clothes like them before or since, but they suited her totally.
The white plates with naff orange and brown squares around the outside which were for special occasions. I have them now, they are still hideous but they make me smile.
Creepy owl collection that covered half of one wall that terrified me totally as a child.

My Nanna used to give me and my brother rich tea biscuits with butter and sugar sprinkled on the top :-)

and warm milk with Sugar YIPPEEEE

I can't think of my grandparents without remembering his cigar, and her bitter lemon (and B&H)... the height of sophistication it seemed to me.
(actually I still love bitter lemon).

Having thought about all these memories, just realised I would have kittens if my parents or inlaws "let" my two do these things but will try to relax (!!) as it was all very important in my childhood. Maybe its because mine are still so long but I wouldnt be impressed about chips at midnight ... oh oh high maintenace mummy!

Roast dinner, usually chicken or lamb, with roast potatoes and yorkshire pudding in a big tray, and carrots and peas.

Two big armchairs by the gas fire.

The big, old, slightly mysterious barometer.

Having a bath ( they were rare at home ! )

Climbing the old oak tree and the rope swing hanging from it's branches.

Sweeties in the car - blackcurrant pastilles from granny.

The visiting ice-cream van and it's loud little tune calling us out.

And the old-fashioned grocery van too.

Grandpa's barley sugars ... and his smelly old pipe.

Playing in the fields out the back amongst the gorse bushes, and with sky-larks high overhead.

The greyhound racing board-game.

The large pebble I'd painted holding the bathroom door open for years !

Only one memory of dad's parents, 2 dark red wingback armchairs facing a gas fire, youngest DB mut have been baby at the time cos I was feeding my dolly and pulled my Tshirt up and Nain told me 'nice girls don't do that!'

My mum's mum - house stank of fags, she hated cats and would bang on the window whenever one came in her garden, plasticine we were only allowed ot play in the summer house nowhere with carpet, sitting on the kitchen worktop smelling all her spice jars, taught us beggar my neighbour and rummy and newmarket, always had a big dark brown owl money box collecting coppers for the local hospice which we used to raid for gambling on newmarket!, mr kiplings french fatties fancies, toby jugs in the little shelves in her stone fire surround, for some reason she had a good collection of walking sticks (don't remember her ever using them) which we loved to play crutches with

My Grandma and Grandad's house:
Faint smell of gas, very hot living room, freezing front room, lots and lots of toast with butter. Dominos, whist, always having to move my grandma's knitting to be able to sit down. Mad carpet. The 'rogues gallery', a wall with all my cousins' pictures on. Love, so much love.

My Granny's house:
Pantry, peat smell in the living room, being given raw jelly cubes as a treat, hiding behind the sofa in a den, lavender, geraniums, gooseberries in a bowl on top of the freezer. Tweed skirts. Dark chocolate digestives and lemonade. Still think of her when I see or smell all of these.

Miss all three of them very much.

Fortunate to still have one set of GP (never knew the other set really as they'd both passed away by the time I was 5) although some part of them has left through dementia. But called back to their original house in London where my father grew up a couple of years ago and a kind man had just moved in and allowed us a tour. Lots of changes (which my Grandmother would have approved of) but a lot of mature plants/shrubs in garden that they would have planted and cared for. My memories though are of:

the hatch between dining room and kitchen where we'd get wafts of women's hour interrupting our play
the little hand-sewn dried-pea-filled frog door stop
the coloured paving slabs outside the front door (so we took a different coloured hopping route to the front door each time we visited)
the best roast potatoes/dinners ever
watching crackerjack on their old TV
making model structures out of drinking straws
picnics including table-cloth in Richmond Park, London
The following records: pinky and perky, Gracie Fields singing The Dicky Bird Hop, and Wally Whyton singing children's favourites like "there's a hole in my bucket"
Oh and getting pins in our feet if we dared not to wear slippers as Grandma made lots of her own clothes
Drinking a snowball "with a cherry please" at Christmas and Black Magic chocolates
Playing cribbage
Being fed pieces of peeled raw apple that were surplass for pies and crumbles with a nice sprinkling of sugar on.
Weetabix with hot milk for breakfast
The "changing towel tube" for changing on the beech, draw-string around the neck
Oh and popping beads. Bead necklaces that you could pop out the beads to make different lengths... it was real costume jewellery

Goodness, I am copying this and gonna scan some old photos in and make a photobook with my memories and thanks and get it to my Grandparents quickly before it is too late. Love them to bits.

Thanks for this lovely thread, she says, typing through a torrent of happy and sad tears!

The china cabinet - turning the little key in the lock and looking at all the knicknacks - coronation mugs, ashtray with 'a present from Scarborough' on it, a tiny pair of china clogs from Holland, odd little cups and saucers.

Being allowed to poke the fire and sweep the ash from the hearth. She also had a brass tub of coloured 'spills' on the hearth (think they were for lighting pipes with? Not that she had a pipe!) which I used to play with for hours.

Sitting on the treadle of her singer sewing machine and getting a smack for doing it . She died 10 years ago and that sewing machine is mine now - the drawers are still full of cottons and buttons and they smell like Grandma's house

I am also in tears typing this!

Staying over every Tuesday night

Drinking ginger beer and Mellow Birds

Eating poached fish and peas for tea, which was always about 4.30pm

The toilet which was always cold

The bathroom tiles which had been hand painted by my great auntie, grandma's sister

The big bed in the spare room, which was incredibly warm and cosy, crisp sheets, electric blanket and eiderdown, but I was terrified of the big wardrobe in there

Christmas round at great auntie and uncles. Lots of raucous laughter, card games around the table, grandma having a couple of whiskys and becoming the life and soul of the party while usually being pretty quiet. She died suddenly when I was 11 and Christmas was never quite the same after that.

Ginger ale not beer I meant.

semolina with lemon curd. my favourite. also they lived in a bungalow on the farm until ill health ,that backed onto a wood we used to play in and they had a large garden that we loved to explore, my sister and brothers used to pretend we were in the famous five/secret seven.though this was back in the seventies when we all felt safe.

I can still remember my dad's dad even though he died when I was 4. My dad looks very like him now which helps.

Oh, the story telling!! Another of the things I regret not listening to more at the time, were Grandpa's war stories. He spent the whole war in North Africa, in the Royal enginers, and used to tell us all sorts of things. Some may have been true, some a wee bit embroidered- I wish I had paid more attention. As it gets closer to Remembrance Sunday, (when he used to polish his medals and walk through Manchester with the Vets) I miss him a lot.

I also gave ds his name as his middle name. I'll never forget when he visited in the hospital and we told him. He was so pleased. (I wanted to call dd2, last year, Florence after gran, but DH wasn't keen on Flo as a nick name). And he said Flossie sounded like a sheep dog

I also had the smell of tomatos as my GP were market gardeners and had big greenhouses and a greengrocer/flower shop in the high street. The smell of flowers shop always reminds me of my nan. They had 4 acres of land on the River Wye

There was a picture of jesus in a meadow in the bedroom we slept in and going out searching for badger sets in the morning.

My nan cooking welsh cakes.

My nan making wreaths and wedding boquests, dying the tips of carnations for buttonholes.

My granddad showing off he could weigh a perfect pound of tomatoes every time.
Feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs in the morning.

My other grandad died when my dad was 2 and my greek nan lived with us until she died when I was 9, unfortunately I have no good memories of her.

I forgot one for my grandmother. When my cousin and I visited her we always wanted to drink out of the little boot glasses she had.There were two of them,not much bigger than shot glasses,shaped like boots.I think they were from The Canaries. There was a blue one and an orange one,and for some reason we always fought over the blue one.

I wish I had them. I don't know what happened to them.

Feeling so very nostalgic now. Don't know where to start with the memories though. But you have made me feel a lovely mix of sad and happy all together.