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?

I was thinking about this earlier today as I was making toast for DD. My grandma made the best toast. She wasn’t a great cook and it was a Christmas tradition to have thick, lumpy gravy and burnt roast potatoes but her toast was amazing. Everyone says the toast after labour is the best toast ever but it didn’t compare to my grandma’s. I was a bit sad thinking DD will never taste the best toast ever.

My nan and grandads garden.

It was amazing. They had quite a large plot, over the decades they had carved out little pathways all though it. I remember being tiny and running around like it was an adventure playground.

They had all sorts of potting sheds and greenhouses and grew so much. My nan had a huge chest freezer under the stairs absolutely full of fruit pies from the fruits they grew. They grew all their own veg.

They both died many years ago now. I’m shit at gardening. I try and fail and I alway talk to them out loud, I tell my grandad that I wish he was still here. He would have taken over for me and taught me how to do it!

Much to my disgust I've had to put up with "in-laws" this weekend...(disgust is the wrong word really); but I've done it for DD as I want her to have these memories when shes older.

I never met my maternal grandparents. My paternal grandad I have one memore of..."he was lying in bed (likely hospital) and my uncle had picked up this white fluffy thing and put it to his face (entertaining me) saying he was Santa sad my grandad saying "that's for my feet". My paternal grandma I had until I was 9 - she was frail, I've got lots of memories of visiting her and being allowed to eat her Meals on Wheels Saturday desert and my £1 pocket money

I wasn’t that close to my paternal grandparents but I still have fond memories of my grandfathers artists studio, and his obsession with British birds. He taught me loads and to this day I still can tell what a bird is by it’s song. My Nan used to bake with me in her kitchen. They had a weeping willow in the garden and I loved playing under it.
My maternal grandparents were very involved in my childhood, I was the only grandchild for about 13 years and they adored me. They’d take me and my mum on holiday all over the uk each year. Every Christmas we’d spend a fortnight there being spoilt. My grandad was a quiet, proud man, an amazing chef, he loved to preserve the things he’d grown in the garden so we always had fruit in syrup, and piccalilli. My Nan loved to knit and crochet. When I was pregnant with my daughter she crocheted a baby blanket, and my Nan died about 18 months later. Even now, 20 years on, when I touch that blanket I can literally feel my nans love that she stitched in to it. It’s kept safely stored away now.

My nana figure was my great aunt ( complicated family ) and she let me write stories on her typewriter which I loved, felt so grown up! She also used to let me have a tiny glass of sherry ( I think it was watered down) as a treat 🤣

So much. Was practically joined at the hip to my maternal grandmother.

Baking together, usually biscuits and apple pies, sewing, knitting and holding my hands out while she wound yarn.

Climbing into bed with her in the morning when we stayed at hers, before my parents and siblings woke up and her reading to me. The smell of a new book - she taught primary school and we tested out new books before she read them to her class.

Going to church together.

Playing cards. Learned so many games and how to play patience.

Gardening.

So much more. I still miss her

I absolutely adored my paternal grandparents.
One of the many things I remember fondly is that each grand child had a little patch of garden and we would help my grandparents plant flowers. I loved strawberries as a child and my patch had lots of strawberry plants.
My Nan also used to work at McVities and my favourite biscuits were Jaffa cakes. Every time I saw her she would always make sure she had a couple of boxes of them just for me.
They were wonderful. My grandad died in 2012 and my Nan in 2016. I never had a good relationship with my mum and my Nan towards the very end of her life told me I was like her daughter really.
Grandparents are so important.

Oh my! This thread has me in bits! My grandparents were amazing. So many happy memories.

My maternal grandfather was a complete hero, the gentlest soul. He died 4 years ago and I miss him every day. My grandmother has had a stroke and is in a home, the surprisingly saddest part for me is that she no longer says my name. She calls me a lovely word relating to my work but it hits me like a brick every time she doesn’t use my name.

I was very lucky to have so much time with them. Always ice lollies in the freezer. What I wouldn’t give to sit by Grandpa on the sofa and hold his hand.

My maternal Grandfather lived with us until he died when I was 5.

I used to roll his cigarettes. I was excellent at it 😆

My dad would have murdered him if he had known, my parents were very anti smoking. My mum used to take him to the bottom of the garden three times a day to smoke.

My grandma lived in Australia. All year she used to collect freebies from shops and fairs and so on and made a parcel to send me at Christmas. It was so exotic and unusual. I remember a wonderful notebook she got from her bank that had a picture of a galah on it.

My dad doesn't like my sons name so jokingly calls him "tom" And my little boy calls him "bear"...

I find it so sweet and know to my dad it's their own little "thing".

Edit- dad hadn't heard my sons name before and us a bit old fashioned so it was a bit of a joke him saying he'll call him Tom, he does actually use his name!

My Granny used to buy Kelloggs Variety Pack for me to have for breakfast, but she used to open the boxes carefully and then afterwards reseal them so we could use them to play shops.

She made the best flapjack known to man and wore wonderful hats everyday.

Playing cards. Trumps and 'runs and trials'. I sat on the floor and we used a stool with some kind of animal skin as a table.

The smell of cheap curry powder. My nana hated curry but unfortunately lived behind a factory that made flavourings. Oddly fond memories of her pottering about cursing the curry factory.

Grandad taught me to play cards, I can read cards very well. DH when we first met taught me rules of new card game, within a couple of hands I was thrashing him.

Grandma meticulously tidy and marmalade sandwiches

My Nan
So much. "Polishing her bras(s)". Saying "two!" And holding up two fingers. Sweets from the sweet tin before you went home. Sending me rock buns by post to university. Talking about all sorts. Watching silly telly. Watching Taxi Driver. Her knitting. The smell of her house. Her cuddles and laughter. Dancing in her kitchen. Spaghetti Bol from square aluminium saucepans. She died 5 years ago aged 102 and I think about her nearly every day. She was my safe place.

As my maternal grandfather died in 1926, and grandma in 1949, I never met either of them. I can very dimly remember once meeting my paternal grandparents in the late 1950s, but couldn’t understand a word they said in their strong Geordie accents!

These are fab! Great thread idea

My granch was my favourite person in the world and I’ve never felt quite the same without him.

I was blessed with 26 years of his company where we’d go on little outings with me pushing him in his wheelchair, or sit for hours listening to his stories of life, putting the world to rights etc.

As a child one of my earlier memories was having a bunch of teeth removed and him feeding me soggy biscuits off a spoon 😂

I still think of him almost every day

i hope my own children will be blessed with similar memories to cherish

@tinselvestsparklepants you've described how I felt about mine, a safe place ❤️ love this

My Grandma would always make us a hot drink (either ovaltine or hot chocolate) with chocolate biscuits for dunking before bed. They used to look after us and our 2 cousins for pretty much the duration of the 6 week holidays plus most other school holidays. They let us build dens using the blankets in the garden, and we put makeshift hammocks up tying them to the fruit trees. West Indian grandparents, they weren’t to be messed with but they were so lovely and patient with us, took us out for pizza and took us to the park for the whole day, set up with picnic blankets and enough food to sink a battleship.
When my grandad was still working he came home on a Friday with a double decker and a kinder egg for each of us kids.
They had a massive house and I got to sleep in a double bed all to myself.
Just a feeling of total security, full bellies and love really. We didn’t have that so much at home.

I agree, so much love ❤️

Ahh this thread. It's triggered an avalanche of memories.

Dinner of traditional English salad - boiled potatoes, ham, celery with salad cream. Supper of ginger nuts or fig roles with a cup of ovaltine sat in PJs. Stunning gardens. Trips out on the train as my grandad used to work on the railways. So much love.

Lots of stories about the war which to my shame I didn't really value at the time. I'd read so many kids novels set in wartime and never think to delve into the real stories that were there in front of me. Now I wish I'd paid attention when my grandad talked about Burma and India; or my grandma talked about life at home.

My Mum's dad made us poached eggs on toast for breakfast and they were (and still are) Grandpa eggs. This was in the 1970s and 80s!

I only ever knew my paternal grandparents as my mum's parents both died before I was born. So many lovely memories though. They had a beautiful house with a gorgeous huge garden, I spent so much time climbing/hiding in trees, playing excellent games of hide and seek etc.

Grandma used to let us come into their bed in the morning when we slept over, and would tell us stories from when she was a girl and went to boarding school. I was obsessed with Enid Blyton/Chalet School so loved hearing about the "real" version of those places (Howell's school in Llandaff for her). She knew so much about literature and theatre, and all sorts of fun poems for different occasions. Hot milk with dark chocolate digestives just before bedtime. She had a lot of health problems in her last decade, so wasn't so active with us, but still gave good cuddles. She died when I was 19, in my first year at uni.

Grandpa could be a bit trickier - almost certainly undiagnosed ASD or similar, and sometimes struggled to relate to teenage girls. But I know he loved us and wanted the best for us in his own way. He was much more active so would take us out rambling all over. He was an excellent mathematician, and when in ~yr8 I was at loggerheads with my teacher about negative numbers, he managed to write an explanation that I accepted - my teacher kept it till I left school! He did most of the cooking, and while some of it verged on the experimental, I have lovely memories of his ginger biscuits and chocolate cake with coffee icing. He taught himself the piano, wasn't particularly good but I always think of him when I hear the Moonlight Sonata, which was one of his favourites. He died when I was 24, in my final year at uni. Neither of them got to see me get married or have my children, but I'm sure they'd have loved them!

My grandad used to set up for breakfast in the evening, it was like being in a B & B!

He lived near Dartmoor and used to love taking us on walks and telling us about the wild flowers and animals.

I had quite a tricky childhood and he was a very constant anchor. I miss him every day. He died in 2020 and because we were in lockdown he died on his own in hospital and we didn't get to say goodbye. Tho the last thing we said on the phone a week before was " love you"

My gran always used to let me eat as many ginger biscuits, which were my favourite as I wanted. At home Mum used to say 3 was enough.