Things that remind you of your grandparents

[RosesAndHellebores]

Mine died 20 years ago and would be 110ish now but I still miss them so much

The bolster on the bed
An old silky jacquard pink blanket that went under the eiderdown
Warm milk with a teaspoon of grated nutmeg
The sweet bowl next to the fruit bowl
Shape with jelly
Pies
Gin and Its
A kitchen that wasn't always spotless
Whiff of horse, hay and Goddard's linament and occasionally Shalimar
Complete no nonsense attitude but so so kind
Every time I look at dd: petite, blonde, blue eyed and the image of grannie (and named for her)

@Fifthtimelucky

My grandparents were probably older than most people's. All four were born in the 1890s. I was lucky in that I had all four until I was 16, and three of them lived to their mid-90s.

One set:

• the grandfather clock that chimed in the half hour
• the mangle for drying clothes,
• my grandmother's false teeth,
• playing cards with my grandfather,
• early morning fishing trips followed by breakfast of the mackerel that we had caught (they lived in a seaside town),
• Camp coffee,
• salads with tomatoes that had been skinned,
• Salt on the table in a small bowl and served with a tiny spoon, rather than being in a shaker or grinder.

The other set:

• the church clock chiming all night long (their house looked over the churchyard and the church was probably only about 50m away),
• my grandfather's wing collars
• tongue and salad,
• meat and potato pie
• parkin
• dandelion and burdock
• no fridge. Food was kept in a walk-in larder that had steps down to the cellar
• long stories about 50 year old cricket matches involving Lancashire and Yorkshire
• sleeping in the attic

That's so beautiful. All of it, but especially that you have those memories stretching back to people born so long ago! Mine were all born in the late teens/20s and even then, it amazes me to think of the amount of time.

The dark wooden table with spiral legs. The twin tub washing machine, saggy armchairs by the fire, one of those record players inside a sort of sideboard with built in speakers, a big old wall clock that ticked and chimed really loudly. An old hand-cranked Singer sewing machine, Christmas fairy lights shaped like little Victorian lanterns, wafer thin wrapping paper like printed tissue, the smell of stale bread in the pantry, Green Meadow butter and Corona pop, the sound of the dog's nails tapping on the plastic mat in the hallway, the smell of machine oil and old metal in my grandad's workshop, Remembrance Day poppies and Palm Sunday crosses tucked behind the mirror on the dresser, a brass ashtray full of odds and ends on the mantelpiece. Welshcakes, bonbons and candy shrimps.

Rich tea biscuits dipped in tea (I used to be allowed to have one if I got up when I couldn't sleep)
Classic old movies- I like film noir now too
Fresh orange juice in summer

My grandad is dead and my gran in the final stages of dementia. She doesnt know me anymore but her face lights up when I enter a room - she seems to 'love' me but not know my name. I miss them terribly.

So many tastes and smells in these memories. It's lovely reading. I so wish mine had seen ds and dd grow up.

As I read everyone else's memories more keep flooding back. Grannie never owned a pair of trousers - she called them slacks :). Grandad's trilby hat and binoculars (I have those in their battered brown case) for race days.

So many things but the first one that springs to mind is the smell of fresh bread. My lovely grandad used to pick me up at lunchtime (in the days when you could go home for lunch) and there was usually a still-warm loaf from the bakers on the passenger seat that I'd have to move to get in and would then hold on my lap til we got back to his house, inhaling the smell all the way. The reason I started going home for lunch was because I was being bullied and my mum worked so if he hadn't stepped in the bullying would have continued. It felt like he saved my life and he was already my hero (my dad wasn't around either) so that smell makes me feel warm and safe and loved. I miss him so much

Sweet peas. Grandad used to grow them near the black door to their place. That smell just takes me back, it’s my favourite scent ever.

And strawberries. At the top of their long, thin garden they had a small patch of strawberries, I loved being allowed to pick them.

Amazing how things from such a long time ago can stay with you and have such a strong memory response (yet easy to forget what you’ve just walked into a room for!)

Butterscotch, Barley Sugar, Clarnico Mints
(All from Woolworths Pick & Mix and kept in an enormous big mahogany sideboard)
Clock Patience
Jelly made double strength in a cut glass bowl.
Bread and butter for tea. From a proper loaf and butter spread with a bone-handled knife.
Toast made in front of the coal fire with the extendable toasting fork
Tiny wooden dustpan and brush for table crumbs
Honesty plants by the outside loo
Pouring boiling water on ants
Postcard of the Queen's children on the wall. For years I thought they were my cousins!

Thus was my Nan by the 1970's She was born in the late 1880's, so I feel really lucky to have had a link to the Victorian era.

Really lovely thread. I miss my gran and granddad so so much.

*Music, my gran could sing beautifully and my granddad loved country music.

• Homemade pea and ham soup followed by homemade rice pudding.
• Roses. My gran adored roses so my granddad planted them all around the garden and tended to them so she always had beautiful roses.
• Going to the local tip.
• Snooker (and my grandad snoring though it driving my gran crazy)
• German Shepard dogs. My grans was a huge softie.
• When I hear a strong Scottish accent.
• My ds red hair that he definitely inherited from his great grandad. My gran would of loved it.
• Those floor sweeper things, like a non electric hoover.

What I’d do to have tens mins with my gran. She’d probably give me a good telling off but to feel that feeling of unconditional love it would be worth it.

My Nan was a Londoner and would tell ten-year-old me garbled stories of Crystal Palace burning down. Just googled and this happened in 1936. The glow of the fire was visible from 8 counties and over 100,000 people gathered to watch. Yet she always told the story as if it had only just happened!

Oh, and a budgie in a cage! Was that a 1970's grandparent thing?

And 4711 cologne sticks for hot days....so much flooding back. Thanks for starting this OP!

@puppygalore

My grandma used to make me brown bread triangles with real butter on. She had a special butter Knife that left lines in the bread and made patterns for me. At home we only ever had cheapo marge so real butter was amazing to me! Of course I'd never eat brown bread for my parents, but would for granny - and my kids are now exactly the same with certain food for my mum! I will always think of that snack whenever I think of my grandma. Plus her cardigans. She'd always wear a beautifully embroidered cardi that always matched her skirt perfectly.

I make homemade brown bread and dd doesn't like mine. She was caught out one day though when I gave her mine and said it was Nanna's (her great grandmother). She gobbled it up and said it was lovely. She was horrified when I said that it was mine. I'm prone to experimenting with seeds and nuts in mine rather than sticking to a basic recipe so that might have been why, I'm not sure that she trusted me to have the same bread any day. With her Nanna, she knew what she was getting. My paternal grandparents What I remember most was just a kindness and gentleness. They were mad to spoil me and put weight on me. My grandmother loved having fizzy drinks and penguin bars and my grandfather loved giving us 2 chops and then weighing us to see whether we had put on weight every few weeks (Nanna used to give us clods of turf for our pockets whenever grandad had tootled off to get the weighing scales). I played cards with my grandmother. A dying sort of pasttime. Both grandmothers incidentally. I remember little about my grandfather apart from that he always sat at the same spot at the table and used to smoke a pipe. My mother hated him. He had a walking stick. He trained dogs. I remember him being aloof but kind.

Maternal grandmother (never met maternal granfather as he died young)
My other grandmother was again a fiend for playing cards but a more difficult game of cards. You had to obey the rules if you were playing with the adults. Every day we went to town she would buy us Kinder Eggs. I'm convinced it was so that she could put the puzzles together lol. She loved doing it because as children it was complicated. She always had Rennies and I loved them so used to ask her for one - it has since crossed my mind that she might have been left in pain in order to placate me (we thought they were mints!) We did crosswords together when older where she would only answer if asked (even though she knew the answer to everything). She was a divil for salt and pepper (white pepper).

@NeedSomeInfoAgain

My Nan was a Londoner and would tell ten-year-old me garbled stories of Crystal Palace burning down. Just googled and this happened in 1936. The glow of the fire was visible from 8 counties and over 100,000 people gathered to watch. Yet she always told the story as if it had only just happened!

Oh, and a budgie in a cage! Was that a 1970's grandparent thing?

My Granny had two budgies!

What I’d do to have tens mins with my gran. She’d probably give me a good telling off but to feel that feeling of unconditional love it would be worth it.

Me too. It was pure acceptance. They had done their time being the disciplinarians so they were free to spoil me. The pure love and acceptance. I so miss my grandmother particularly. Both of them, but my paternal grandmother only died 4 years ago and she had met my dd.

Chenille tablecloth
Counterpanes and bolsters on the beds
Bedjackets
Sago pudding
Freesias
Mackeson Stout
Ewbank carpet sweeper

My grandparents both died within a fortnight over 30 years ago when I was 19. I didn’t know my other set, but yes things that remind me of those who I did know:
Grandad
The dusty, oily smell of an old garden shed tgst has housed a petrol lawnmower*
Old Virginia pipe tobacco
The Two Ronnies
A clean, starry sky
Unloved of the outdoors
Tortoises

Granny
JusRol pastry
Digestive biscuits
Trebor mints
The smell of Johnson’s baby powder
“Set” hair, the clothes and hair styles of the late 1950s, like in “Summer of Rockets”
Saving scraps of soap, wrapping paper, foil
Alpen
Eiderdowns
The Times Crossword

Pampas grass
Collecting shells (still have some is a box that grandad has saved)
Prunes with cereal at breakfast
Gardening
Going to church
The smell of a certain face powder
Hugs - I can still feel wrapped in the love they showed
Sausage dogs
Foxes glacier mints

All 4 grandparents mixed in there, I was very lucky with mine as they were all wonderful!

Mother's parents:
Kiku perfume (I've still got my grandma's last bottle)
The smell of blackcurrant leaves
Apple blossom
Sausage and chips and tinned tomatoes
Amazing Grace and Calon Lan
Grapefruit
Marmalade
They've been dead a long time- 34 and 20 years. I didn't really know my dad's parents so I don't have many memories.

One set of my grandparents lived in the Lakes and the other in Wales. My memories of the Lakes are so happy, going for walks in the woods, hopping over streams, watching the trains going up to Scotland.

Food wise it was: pickled onions (nobody has ever, ever managed to replicate my grandmas) same with chocolate cake, butter on her veg (no butter in our house just marge) the booziest trifles & Christmas cake going, poor DH nearly couldn't drive home once after a good helping of trifle! Astral, obsession with M&S, Gin & Fanta and 'funny milk' aka evaporated milk poured over her incredible rice pudding.

Grandad always smelt of soap and only ever had Rice Krispies for breakfast so DB and I always did well with the free gifts you got once you'd saved up enough tokens from the cereal boxes!

My other Grandpa was a decorated war hero and hated having to go to the reunions held in his honour, but was always immaculately dressed. He'd wear a cravat to do the gardening! Pipe smoke reminds me of him too. Terribly terribly well spoken

Granny was just cool. She'd had the same hairdo as she'd had in the 1940s a sort of elastic band thing that wrapped around the whole head with hair tucked in. She loved watching all sport and played dominoes with us at 6am when she came to stay. Fond memories and now I'm nearly crying. Lovely thread idea OP.

Chrysanthemums, sweatpeas and the smell of tomato plants. My grandparents had a beautiful garden and I would give anything to spend just half an hour in it again.

All these mentions of flowers. My grandad grew garlic all the time. We (and he) used to eat the leaves. He told us that it would make us strong lol. I've never seen garlic grown anywhere since actually. Just buy the bulbs.

Apple tarts and potato bread (most won't know what that is). My Nanna having a sherry one Christmas and nearly giving herself a convulsion she was laughing so much. At nothing lol.

Thick doorstops of bread slathered with butter (very rare in the 70's when marg was all the rage!)
Hankie up the sleeve
Knotts landing and The Sullivan's
Avon talc with the powder puff
Candle wick bedspread in pink
Imperial Leather
American tan tights drying in front of the fire

At the start of lockdown a year ago, the only soap I could find was Wright’s Coal Tar soap. The moment I opened it, I was transported back to my grandparents’ downstairs bathroom c. 1979! That and Izal toilet roll. About 25 years ago I worked on the redevelop of the site where Izal was made in Sheffield. Even though I grew up hundreds of miles away, I felt very nostalgic!

My MIL reminds me of my grandmother, wanting to make sure we have plenty to eat when we are at her house, finding things in the back of the cupboard that she says she has had for ages but you know in truth that she has just bought them for a bargain