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 great aunt was also my grandmother figure. She lived in the States so didn’t see her a huge amount but I loved her very much. We used to write each other long letters all through my childhood. I would send her my terrible teenage poetry and she would write back with these very meaningful interpretations of the nonsense I’d written 😂

The last time we went to visit her before she died my Dad rented a convertible because she said she’d always wanted to drive around in one. She wore fabulous headscarfs and we drove around the lakeshore where she lived and all the other drivers tooted for her. She was so happy and that’s how I always picture her now.

We used to go to our lovely nanas every Sunday after Sunday School.
She had a tin of marbles that she let us play with (they used to be my mums when she was little) She would make us cheese and cucumber sandwiches, followed by jelly and cream. She would always buy us all a great big Easter egg each, but because my brother & I went round regularly, she always let us choose ours first. I loved going there. She was great fun & let us get away with lots🤣She really loved being a nana. We stayed close with each other all the way till she passed at the grand age of 97. Miss her lots.

I remember thinking my Nan and Grandad lived the most luxurious lifestyle because they had a Teasmade at the side of the bed in their bungalow. Every morning, the Teasmade made them both a cup of tea and my Nan would pass one cup over to my Grandad. And they both had their own tupperware box of biscuits under the bed (she had Custard Creams; he had Ginger Nuts) so they could have one with their tea in bed. I just thought life couldn't get much better than that. When we stayed I used to get in the middle of the bed when the Teasmade went off and get to choose which biscuit I had. My little brother always used to fiddle with the Teasmade buttons when he was a toddler when we visited so they'd get woken up at 3am with a cup of tea the following morning. My Nan used to ring my mum at about 7am and say "He's bleeding done it again!".

She used to also desperately be posting handfuls of sweets through the rear car windows for us as we left (like we'd not scoffed enough while there). She'd be tottering down the drive as we reversed out, sticking Milk Bottles and Chocolate Eclairs through the windows. My dad ran over her foot once! 😂

I used to love watching Newsround with my granny and we'd discuss what was happening in the world, she actually loved kids TV and would happily watch all kinds of crap with me.

She was an absolutely dreadful cook but did a mean stew, and always warmed my "civvy" clothes for me on the radiator when I came in from school. We also did a lot of lunch dates, which were really fun. Highly recommend to anyone to take your grandchild out for lunch at a favourite cafe they'll remember it forever.

My immediate family are much louder and more prone to arguments. She was very chatty and funny but also just a wonderful calm person who let me just "be".

We visited maternal granny weekly on a Saturday and had tea.
She had sweets waiting for us.
She had a lovely garden, she was really into her garden and she had a pnd front and back.

She had a gnome ornament that lived by the pond and we used to paint the gnome when it needed it.

When we used to stay at my grandma's house, I'd crawl into bed with her before everyone woke up and she'd read me a story from a little collection of fairy tales. She probably would have preferred not to be woken up at the crack of dawn but I loved those moments.

Just everything. My granny was my favourite person in the world. She passed away when I was 19. I am 36 now and still shed a tear for her every now and then, and feel like she is still with me.

My nan taught me how to knit, although I can't do it now. She also used to curl my hair using rags and buy me all the sweets I wanted! My father in law looks after my son in the week and also looked after my daughter and it's really lovely the little things they do together.

My Grandad built a dolls house from scratch for my sister; decorated it, made mini furniture etc. My Nanna loved to bake and she made the best jam tarts. No jam tart has tasted as good since! They were things made with love.
I miss them so much and hope they're looking down on us now.

Aahh. My grandparents are getting older now and my Nan is in a dementia care home so it was nice to stop and think about this.

My grandads chocolate limes in a paper bag on the kitchen table

The way my nanna always made my fried eggs crispy on the bottom the way I like them

How my grandad would always ask if I am still ‘top of the class’ everytime he saw me.

How my nanna called her make up ‘tut’ like ‘I just have to her my tut on.’

How when my nanna hugged me I always remember thinking how soft her skin was

My grandad building me a Wendy house in their back garden for Christmas, I can’t explain how excited I was! He put carpets down and curtains up and everything.

Grandparents are so precious. I miss my nanna every day.

Gardening and baking with my great granny, always saying little thank you prayers before we got into bed.

My maternal grandad, we used to take his dog a long walk (to get out of grumpy Nanas way) we'd collect conkers, go to the park and call at the shop where he'd let me and my brother have 50p each for the sweet shop (50p back in the early 80's!)

Amazing carefree times

Some lovely memories here and a fair few nominations for the thread to go into Classics so we're going to move it there now.

Like lots of posters on here, many of my memories of my grandparents are food related - they had a little walk in pantry cupboard stacked with tins of every description (early Preppers?!)

I remember baked beans with my grandad's added ingredients - loads of butter and ketchup stirred into the pan and my nan's porridge made with half a tin of golden syrup dolloped in it...it's a wonder I still have all my own teeth.

Here's to all the grandparents.

I never met my grandmothers-one died before I was born, the other lived in a different continent. But that one wrote me lovely letters and sent me a Christmas stocking every year full of fascinating free and cheap things she spent the year collecting. My parents saved it for New Years Day. I remember that she wrote to my mother the year I was 10 asking if I was too old for a stocking, and my mother said I probably was, thinking she was getting too old and frail to do it any more and wanted to stop. Mum warned me that there wasn't going to be a stocking this year. But she sent all the same things but in a box, not a stocking!

I remember my grandpa and grandma taking me and my brother to the circus and afterwards buying us helium balloons that they tied to our wrists. I remember my grandpa was very smart in his tweed jackets and had a selection of hats on the back shelf of his car. He had the looks and charm of Sean Connery and was out absolute number 1. favourite relative.

My grandnan (great grandmother) had a black and white tv even in the 90s and loads of wooden gypsy-style caravan ornaments around it that she'd happily let us fiddle with.

She always made a buffet lunch when my nan brought me round which always included, without fail, lettuce hearts, boiled potatoes from a tin, deli ham and pink wafer biscuits.

She also had a set of coffee/tea/sugar canisters which had 70s style brown and orange flowers on, but each had a separate coloured top - she didnt keep tea and coffee in these - instead, she kept different biscuits in them and it was our mission as kids to mix up the tops and then insist that we each had to choose a biscuit from a separate cannister as a luck-based choice. One had custard creams, one had bourbons and one had party rings.

On days she knew we were coming she would go out to the market that morning and buy my sister and I each a white paper bag (like the ones you used to get for penny sweets) with 2 piece of fruit in. I got a pear and an apple and my sister got a banana and an apple.

She had an old house that had not been decorated in decades which featured long, heavy velvet curtains in the dining room that we loved to hide in, and a framed puzzle depicting 2 border collies. She loved border collies and had them until she died (to my nan's dismay really as she ended up with the last one).

The house also had a huge cellar - I was fascinated by this and she was very happy for us to go down there but I was terrified of getting stuck down there. the stairs were very narrow and dark and my nan refused to go down with us so I think I only went once when my uncle happened to be there. It was dark and gloomy with only one small high window onto the street (pavement level) and there were old bits of furniture covered in dust sheets. I think now that it may have been used as a shelter in the war, but she didn't live there then we don't really know.

She used to say things like "I'll skin you" if we were naughty, but in a jokey way.

She died when I was 7, in the late nineties, only in her 70s from a burst blood clot after a hip replacement. RIP grandnan.

Granda made me crepes every weekend morning, I’d wake up to the smell and feel so giddy and rush to the kitchen.

I liked the sound of his voice, it was so soothing.
He was a soft and kind man, he had a deep aversion to upsetting anybody, I don’t remember him ever doing so willingly.

His hands were so big and gentle when they stroked my cheek so lovingly.

Grandma made the best bread, hers had a different texture I haven’t tasted before or since, it was lighter and didn’t sit as heavy and tasted of sunshine and moonbeams. Is that what love tastes like?

Gardening with Grandad and his salad jokes, 'lettuce be friends', 'what's tomato with you', 'Is this onion-in you? My Nana's old 30's dressing table with green glass vanity set and baking together in her miniscule kitchen. Playing card games together. My other Nana's funny anecdotes and her Reader's Digest music collection.

I visited the village of one of my grandmothers last year for the first time since about a year after her death, and that was over 30 years ago. Church and village green still the same, went to one of two cafes and talked to those who lived in the village.

Brought all the happy memories back.

I used to " help" my mum in making jam tarts. The ones I made ended up with grey looking pastry and we'd go over to my grandparents flat, me proudly bearing the rather grubby jam tart. I'd give it up grandad with my mum trying to rescue grandads stomach by saying, " oh it'll be perfect for grandad to take to work tomorrow " aka ( chuck it in the bin when we go home) . But no I'd insist the poor man ate it in front of me.
Bless him , he was fabulous. He'd happily join in when I wanted to play hospitals and I can see him now wrapped up like a mummy while he " recovered " from whatever surgery I'd just performed on him.