What lovely things do you remember about grandparents?

[ipercy]

My little one goes to my parents house two days a week when I'm at work and for an afternoon snack, my mum always makes him a boiled egg as part of a little picky tray.

He has started calling boiled eggs "grandma eggs" and I think it's really sweet!!

It's got me thinking about things I remember from being little and I always remember sitting in my grandads shoulders and playing hairdressers

What memories do you look back on and smile?

My nana used to make me a stack of pancakes and I'd eat all of them with lemon and sugar for my lunch. (Not very nutritious but that's what grandparents are for)
My grandad on the other side had a wonderful garden full of frogs and beehives and smelled gorgeous. We used to eat raspberries straight off the bush. I have plants in my garden that he gave me as cuttings and I think of him when I do the weeding.

Being given the honour of polishing her brass animal figurines. We took it in turns each Sunday afternoon. Afterward tea was always bread and jam, buttered malt loaf and battenberg cake.

To this day I hate Battenberg. Its really a nice memory but I can never voluntarily eat marzipan again.

My mum's mum, I always remember pieces in lemon curd on pan bread, my dad's mum I always remember home made lentil soup in red melamine bowls

Baking bread and cakes with my grandma and gardening with my grandfather. Lots of great memories.

My nana always brought me tins of creamed rice when she came to visit.
She was wonderfully eccentric and we all loved her.

My mother's mother died when I was five, and although I have a vague impression of a kind old lady, my only clear memory of her is when I suppose I must have been boisterous or noisy, aged about three, she took me on her lap and said, chuckling, 'I'm going to murder you!'. I immediately jumped down and ran to my mother. 'Nanny's going to murder me!'. I couldn't understand why everyone burst out laughing, and Nanny ruffled my hair. I was, my mother told me years later, mollified by a sweet.

My maternal grandfather was one of my favourite people ever. He retired a few months after I was born and we spent a lot of time together when I was a child, even though my GPs lived an hour away.

There was a gate in the back wall of his garden, that lead onto a country lane. We used to go for walks along the lanes with an empty sweet tin, and collect acorns, or catkins, or pebbles, or some other seasonal artefact. He died when I was 19. About 20 years later I got a whiff of "his" pipe tobacco waiting for a train at Birmingham New Street and I was instantly transported back to his garden.

These are lovely memories.

I have no lovely memories. Never knew my father’s parents; have no real memories of my mum’s. Reading everyone else’s is very sweet - I would love something like this to look back on.

One side. Stories they told. They were always the same stories but I loved that anyway.

Other side (granny): cuddles and the gorgeous cakes and biscuits she made. Her fondness for Mick Jagger. This was the 1980s.

Baking bread and tea cakes with my granny. She loved handicrafts and taught me how to crochet, the make macrame plant hangers and various other things that I thought were wonderful at the time. I would hold her skeins of wool on my hands while she wound the wool into a ball 😊

My other granny was very quiet but made a lovey trifle and always let me help myself to club chocolate biscuits from a special tin.

My paternal Grandparents were wonderful. My grandfather was a quiet man with rocksolid integrity. He was an art teacher. My grandmother was funny and fierce. My dad recalls when he was about 8 he shoplifted some sweets and she was furious and marched him to the shop to apologise and pay for them with his pocket money. She had a stroke at 55 and could never speak again. The only word she could say was 'JESUS!!' and then only when her football team lost. They called me 'chickadee' and my grandmother made madeira cake and adored geraniums.

They both died at 75 within weeks of each other. I miss them.

My grandma always wore a white frilly apron in the kitchen and she made me one on her sewing machine when I was about 3. She called it my 'spinny pinny' because it was pleated and flared out when I spun around, it had a little strip of lace at the bottom that I thought was so grown up.
She used to like baking with me and there is a photo of us in her kitchen- she is wearing slippers, a pink dress and her apron and she is laughing with her head thrown back, and I'm about 4, sat grinning on the countertop wearing the spinny pinny over my pyjamas with cake mix all over my face. I love that picture and it feels very 'her'.

She taught me to sew with a machine when I was about 8, I was terrible but loved it and she was so patient with me. She taught me to make ragdolls and clothes for them and I remember lots of afternoons in her dining room making old fashioned dresses for the dolls. Just like the dresses she used to sew for me to wear as a toddler.

She died a few years back and I miss her so much, the last thing she sewed for me was these two little spinny pinnies because I had just had my daughters. She made them big so they could grow into them, they have been wearing them when we bake for the last year and they make me so happy and also sad at the same time.

I used to go to my nans quite a lot as a little girl and she spoiled me rotten.

One of my favourite memories would be her bringing me tea and custard creams in bed in the morning before getting up for breakfast! It was such a treat.

My grandad went “in to town” every Friday. He went the council offices to pay his rates and rent for his garage, to the guildhall to pay his membership for the Rotary Club, to M&S for a cottage pie, and to WH Smith to pay for his newspaper subscription. In the school holidays he took me with him; he’d give me the bus fare money and I was responsible for asking for “one return and one half return to town.” I was never allowed to take a seat if an adult was standing, I had to offer my seat and sit on his knee or stand. He’d take me to the grand House of Fraser cafe for our Elevenses. My mum always told me I was to have a fruit juice and a plain biscuit; grandad always bought me a hot chocolate with whipped cream and the stickiest, jammiest bun for sale. I thought that this was a secret. Turns out, my mum knew all along! (Of course she did!)

We had ‘grandma chips’ and ‘grandma curry’ growing up. The chips were just homemade chips done in a fryer.. absolutely delicious! The curry was not like a curry at all, but was still called curry and it was so nice.. but no one ever knew how to make it until a couple years ago I asked.. and I received the recipe! So I now make grandma curry for my family 🥹

Also, we used to sleep over occasionally.. we would always get supper in bed and then in the morning she would make the nicest holiday all inclusive style breakfast buffet.. we would have bacon, toast, cereal, fruit, orange juice.. if you picked coco pops she would sprinkle a little sugar on top! 😂🫣

Banana sandwich ..known as nana- wich
Milk with my packed lunch in a Tupperware beaker ( gold top milk )
Homemade lemon curd tarts
Freshly battered fish and penny chips on Saturdays with home made mushy peas
Figgy roll biscuits
Granddads green house tomatoes
My maternal grandparents were the best and I think about them daily even though I'm now 55 years old !

Oh and Gleaning peas with my grandad

My grandad making pancakes when he picked me up after school
and leaving bits of Yorkshire pudding in the tin for me to go and “pinch” because I thought he never knew 😂 he died when I was 6 I miss him

Nana (mum's mum) used to give me slices of Mothers Pride bread and butter when I visited and I would go with her to the local shopping arcade, she would always have one of those shopper things on wheels with her. Can't remember their actual names!Gran (dad's mum) would make us home made soup, a roast then ice cream and tinned fruit every Sunday and granda would have the wrestling on the tv. Every Hogmany my dad would take us over there just right on Midnight to first foot them. I hated it at the time but look back on it fondly now!My children who are still in primary school have no grandparents now and it really cuts me up inside at times

Both of my Nana’s were lovely, but one was a favourite. She always gave me black jacks and fruit salads to take home.

Making lemon cake and popcorn

Running to GP's bed on Christmas morning (they used to stay with us), jumping in with them and opening the presents squealing with excitement

Learning to read, write, add up, tongue twisters

Stories off the top of their heads, not off books

My grandmothers always wearing terrible flowery dresses, my grandfathers always ALWAYS wearing shirts

My mum's mum teaching Dsis, my cousins and me to pray before bedtime - she always was and remained until her death the only believer in our large family bless her!

My Gran lived in a cottage that had plastic flowers stuck in the front garden which I knew was barmy but really liked because it was colourful in winter.

When I was a baby she gave me a teddy and named her. When I was older she told me that the name was the same name as a baby she'd had that had died. This might sound morbid or weird now but I remember it as being a secret between us and it felt special to me. I still love that teddy!
On my 8th birthday she gave me a parcel with some 'special' things in, all in tissue paper, like an old silver teaspoon and a tiny book about angels. She died when I was 18.

We used to stay with grandparents for our holiday. After we'd been out for the day, I'd return to their house to find a note from grandpa from my teddy describing the adventures teddy had had whilst I'd been out.

I love some of these! The shoulder / hairdresser thing is one of the very few memories I have as they passed when I was really young.

My Grandma would drive for an hour to help
my mum whenever we were sick.
She always brought a lot of homemade treats - jelly cakes, apple cake slices, biscuits. And “20c worth of mixed lollies” in a paper bag. That was a lot of sweets back in the late 70s in Australia.
And then she’d basically wrap us in blankets and cuddle us for hours on her lap. She’d sing all manner of nursery rhymes and riddles whilst tapping in time on our swaddled up bottoms.
If she stayed the night then she’d get my brothers bed and he’d bunk in with my sister and me. We’d all want to be the first in for an early morning cuddle in bed with her and she’d indulge us by scratching our backs and playing “guess what picture I’m drawing” and there’d always be a two-headed monster drawing at some point.
She’d also work her way through my mums ironing basket. I only ever remember the ironing basket being empty after one of her visits.
I have so many other fond memories and I miss her very much.