Forever Take My Hand by Iris Therese Smith Reid

Author:Iris Therese Smith Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: autobiography, memoirs, life story, World War Two, Grimsby, childhood, remembrances, working life, marriage, hardship, dementia, caring, coping, reminiscences, happy days
ISBN: 9780722347973
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2018
Published: 2018-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

He knew he had gone too far this time. He knew I could have had a heart attack and I could see my reaction had frightened him. He swore on his life he would never do anything like that again. He said it was him and Robbo having bets again. I was a while getting over that and I did not sleep for days.

My grandchildren loved living near us and we loved them being near also, but every time the ice cream van came they ran straight into our house to me. And they knew they had to call me Nanna, because sometimes they would say, “Grandma - oh, I mean Nanna - can we have an ice cream?”

For a joke I would say, “You don’t live here; you live next door. Go ask your mother.”

They would always say, “Mother always tells us he only rings his bell when he has no ice cream left.”

Then I would say, “And I have no money left!”

They would say, “Nanna, pull our other legs, they have bells on.”

They soon learnt how to get round us - we loved the way they came straight to our house first.

I would love to watch children’s films like One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Cinderella, etc., so when one was showing at the cinema I would ask the grandchildren if they would like me to take them to see it.

They would say to me, “Nanna, don’t you mean that you want us to take you to see it?”

It would cost me sweets and an ice cream.

Sometimes my two daughters would say to their father, “We are off dancing and taking Mother with us. We will look after her. She could do with a night out.”

So he would babysit while we went together.

On the way out they would say to their father, “Don’t worry, we will make sure she picks a good-looking man to dance with.”

He would look a bit worried and say, “You two, make sure you look after your mother for me.”

They would answer, “We will try to sell her for a pint or even a half-one.”

One night when we went dancing my daughters were to meet their boyfriends there, inside, as they would pub-crawl all the way to the dance and would be quite drunk before even getting there. So we got inside and bought ourselves a pint of shandy each while waiting for them to arrive. We just sat down and were about to take a sip of our drinks when their boyfriends walked up to us. They had had a good skinful, as they usually did.

My eldest daughter’s boyfriend approached, saying, “Oh, there you are.”

With that he picked her up, lifted her above his head then dropped her. She hit the floor with her head. An ambulance came to take her to hospital, and I climbed into the ambulance with her. I was mad because I hadn’t even had one sip of my full pint of shandy.

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