Gallery: Secret Hastings

It's time to get thinking caps on for Tara's Gallery she wants us to show the secret places where we live. So here's a few snaps of Hastings and local area:

Goodbye grandpa

My dad rang me at 7:30 this morning to say that my grandad had died in the night. This wasn't an unexpected piece of news as he was very frail and had reached the age of 94 which even these days is above average. It was still a very sad thing to be told and I had to break the news to my children. Luckily at 6 & 3 its mostly gone over their heads but I'm sure it will hit them eventually. I've gone through today in a bit of a strange haze with occasional tears but having to carry on as normal for the children.


In honour of his 94 years on this planet I thought I would explore some of the things that made him special...

 grandpa 2nd from left

The son of Welsh headmaster and a Lancastrian mother he was born in Lancashire during the First World War. The middle son of a family of 5 he grew up in a time of change and took part in the first ever Scout Jamboree.

 uniform has changed a bit!

On leaving school he joined the local bank, in the days when banking was a respected profession! I find it hard to imagine him as a young man shining up the gas lamps in the street to light his cigarette... 

He fell in love with a young hairdresser called Margaret:

and they married in 1939 just after the outbreak of World War 2.

Due to a combination of medical history and banking background Walter served in the Pay Corps in the UK. At one point he took a demotion so he could be posted near his expanding family after the birth of the first of 3 sons.

After the war he worked very hard to get the necessary qualifications to eventually become manager of a bank. His sons grew up and left home and he took early retirement to his weekend cottage in Dumfries & Galloway. This would be a place of happy memories for his grandchildren to come and visit.

 

© Copyright Ann Cook and licensed for reuse under thisCreative Commons Licence

Most of his siblings had emigrated to South Africa or Rhodesia and, once he retired, many trips were made to visit them and the nieces and nephews who lived out there. 


In latter years he moved to a slightly less remote village in Cumbria and then to Penrith before ending his days in Appleby-in-Westmorland.


I will always remember him for his enjoyment of the Telegraph crossword - he could do it without writing in the answers so my other granny could share the paper! He loved writing letters to us all and was enthusiastic about the research I was conducting for the family tree. Lots of family members had their only correspondence through him so I hope we can keep in touch.


I am glad my children got to meet him and hope they can remember him later.

So I hope this post was coherent as I've raised a glass or 2 of wine to his memory.


RIP Walter Spencer-Jones 2nd October 1915 > 29th April 2010


Son of Owen & Hannah
Brother of Llew, Olwyn, Arnold & Norah
Husband of Margaret
Father of Owen, Peter & Nigel
Father-in-law of Marlene, Alison & Helen
Grandfather of Mike, Becky, Vicky, Roger, Christopher, Martin & Ros
Great-grandfather of Al, Elisabeth, Ben, Oliver, Toby, Edward & Sebastian
Step Great-grandfather of Chris, Ed & Lauren
Friend to many
Missed by us all

Portrait Gallery

Time for Tara's portrait theme for the Gallery this week...

me at Christmas - can't quite manage the coiffure myself!!

It's hard at the weekend

not that it's easy during the week but single parenting at the weekend is a whole new level..


It seems that everywhere you go when you are out that everyone else is in nice little family units of mum & dad plus kids - this may not be the case but it looks that way! From Monday to Friday the things I do tend to be just mum's or the occasional dad or grandparent. Compact family units don't do school runs or toddler groups on the whole...


My kids have to cope with each other's company for 12 hours solid. They can go for about an hour of playing nicely together and then one or other of the upsets the other. We end up with shouting & fighting and usually someone needing a cold compress. I can leave them playing together but as soon as I pop to the loo or go to get a meal ready WW3 breaks out in the other room.


If I try and take turns at giving each of them some undivided mummy time the 3 year old doesn't get the fact that his big sister is allowed to have mummy to herself for a few minutes each day. So it ends up with her only getting me to herself after he has supposedly gone to bed - and even then he keeps coming back for more.


When we go out for a treat its a real minefield. I can't trust them to be left on their own at a table whilst I go and order drinks etc., if one needs the loo we all have to go. Yesterday I finally caved in to little ones request to go on the dodgems. This meant I have to leave a screaming 6 year old watching from the side as neither child is tall enough to go on without a grown up. Needless to say we won't be repeating that one! They each have to take turns watching the other one do something whilst I hold their hand. This is when their age gap stands out more as they want to do different things.


If another grown up is around it is so much easier as we can divide and conquer. I can catch 15 minutes of me time to draw breath. I can also let my poor 6 year old have time with me without her little brother butting in and causing chaos.


We do have fun and I love spending time with my kids but I look forward to weekdays when I don't have them both all day and it's much more relaxing. Here's hoping that the Incredible Years parenting course I've started will help both me & the kids learn to have fun with out all the aggro!

See we do have fun together!

It isn't all bad but I wish it was a lot less stressful...

Kindness of a stranger

One of Josie's Writing Workshop prompts this week is to blog about a random act of kindness that we have either received or given and this brought back memories for me...


It was mid September last year and just over a month since my husband had left home for his new girlfriend. Things were so new I was trying to carry on as normal. 


I had made a booking for a book stall at a dog show weekend at the Hop Farm months before and couldn't afford to lose the money. So for 2 days on the trot I had to get both my kids up at 6 AM to drive to the venue and set-up. At least on the second day my mate Sarah was helping out. The days were very long and the profit was not very high so I was feeling very down. At least the kids had had fun seeing all the dogs and looking around but it really hadn't been worth the effort. 


As it was fairly late in the day that we finished each day we had tea at the Little Chef on the way home. On the second night the manager remembered us and is it was very quiet stopped for a chat. I told him what a crap weekend I'd had and he told me that his restaurant was in danger of closure as the company was only leasing the land. 


The kids and I ate our dinner and the manager came back over. He told us that a man had paid for our dinner as he overheard the conversation. I nearly burst into tears. The manager said he had never had anyone do that before! This is something that happens in stories and not to real people...