I was in West Kensington the other day and suddenly I was five again and going to school for the first time. Actually, maybe not the first day, as the routine had been established. I was holding my grandmother’s hand. We would play word games on the way. I must have been able to read, […]Read Post ›
I have a lot of antique jewellery left over from when my mother tried her hand at being an antique dealer, and ran a little stall in the vintage market Antiquarius in the Kings Road in Chelsea. That was a very exciting and beautiful place and I loved going there to help. There was also […]Read Post ›
Packing away my grandmother’s spectacles I came across this piece of embroidery. My father had obviously packed away her things when she died and gave them to me many years later. But I never really looked closely until now. I remember this cushion and I always knew she had embroidered it. There were some others […]Read Post ›
For Y (G E) It is a long time since I actually listened to the programme, but I believe the guest is limited to eight records. I don’t know if I’ll be able to be so succinct bur we shall see. First of all I would have to take with me the double LP of […]Read Post ›
My grandmother, Janina Wysoka, nee Kirschinger, in 1917 just before she got married. She was born in 1896 and died in 1978 just before I got married. Born in Bratislava; brought up in Vienna. Spent twenty years in Lwow, then Siberia and the long journey to freedom through Iran, Palestine and finally England in 1947. […]Read Post ›
For AC My fourth grandmother, on the other hand, was the only one for whom I found difficulty in bringing any granddaughterly instincts to the fore. She was my stepfather’s mother, an aristocrat by birth, bearing and marriage, and the last ten years of her life exactly spanned the middle years of mine. She […]Read Post ›
For EMO My third grandmother- Babunia- was no blood relation – she was a holiday relative, and I loved her. Two school friends of my mother had married, begotten two children, and gone to live in Wales. Fresh air, a damp cottage on a farm, children, animals, flowers and a loving guardian were all […]Read Post ›
But back to circa 1956. My grandma has graduated to a hospital, my mother is no longer a child volunteer and my father has been honourably demobilized, given a minuscule grant, and told to get on with it. I am three years old and quiveringly anticipating this grandmatriarchal visitation. Physically she was very large. […]Read Post ›
Grandmothers For K, A, M … I was blessed with four. Which means I was twice as lucky as the average child and four times as fortunate as the average orphan. An advantage of four times seventy years against my erstwhile seven. Formidable calculations, guaranteed to put off the average innumerate reader. Be not […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 