It was whilst enjoying scones jam and cream (let’s not get into that please) at our Coronation tea party that two of my friends started talking about their ‘grandchildren’. I burst out laughing. These two glamourous ladies in no way resembled my dear old Grandma Rosa who, as Mother would have said was,

“dead buried and the sheets washed!”

It lead to a nostalgic conversation full of laughter as we described our respective Grandmas.

Grandma Rosa was a large lady both height and widthwise with an ample bosom and all was kept firmly in place by whale-boned corsets, which, my sister used to help her out of at night and sit by her vast brass feather bed. She made the best chicken soup I’ve ever tasted, which, she taught my mother how to make after teaching her how to wring a chicken’s neck!  For a while, she and my grandfather ‘Wolf’, a man half her size in stature, ran a boarding house for theatricals in Birmingham. She was usually to be found in a wrap around floral pinny but had one or two nice ‘costumes’, as she referred to them, for high days and low days which were topped off with a rather fetching hat plonked on her snow white head!

When I came home I looked at the old advert I was sent by a cousin sometime back in which Grandma appeared and posted it on the Boom Radio Facebook page. It prompted some lovely memories like this one from Julie Collins:

“My Maternal Nan b. 1880 couldn’t find her false teeth … she’d mistakenly wrapped them in her veggie peelings and threw them on the back of the fire … only found the porcelain teeth when she raked out the fire the next morning.”

A couple of good old Devonian grans were mentioned too like Dianne Swrody’s who said:

“My dear nan worked hard through the war but when we were older at school she would meet us and take us to the Palace Theatre in Plymouth to watch regular shows. There were wonderful old shops confectioners with jar upon jars of brightly coloured sticks and sweets and Jewish tailors who could create any wonderful garment.  A shop where they fitted our ballet and tap dancing shoes”

and Karen Stevenson’s  who, she said:

“was lovely, but she was no oil painting. Her long hair was plaited & wound round her ears like headphones. No eyebrow plucking or waxing, no time for skincare routines or manicures, just wash & go in Knights Castile soap. She made the mistake of buying Camay once & Grandad refused to use it cos it was pink. She was never out if her housecoat/ pinny at home..and always baking. She used to have the radio on in the kitchen all day. On Saturday afternoons she was glued to the Sport and got quite into the wrestling yelling at the TV, if someone hurt Big Daddy!! Loved my grandma so much. She taught me to read aged 2, so I was fully literate before I got to school, and she introduced me to good music..and shopping in Dingles and John Yeo in Plymouth. She was a swimmer..and was one of the Plymouth Ladies. I learned to swim with her in the open air Lido. I still use her stew & Dumplings recipe to this day…and suet puds.”

Grannies may be a more ‘glamourous’ bunch nowadays who go to Zumba classes, wear leggings and spend 3 weeks on the Costas every year but I’m so glad I had mine. Grandma Rosa typified a  breed of women the likes of which we’ll never see again!

Read all about it in the Western Morning News