Snapshot: My grandparents’ wartime wedding

I love this photograph of my grandparents’ wedding, c1941. I loved them both – my nana, with her wicked sense of humour, always pleased to see me, and my grandad, solid, dependable and totally under my toddler-sized thumb. In this photo, Charlie is wearing his Royal Artillery uniform, having taken two days leave of duty to marry his sweetheart, Hilda.

I can’t remember how old I was when I learned that Grandad was a soldier during the second world war. It is like two different people: the young man called up and sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force and the man I knew, swinging his leg over his bike and calling “cheerio” on his way back to work, or sinking his top lip into his pint of beer at the working men’s club on a Saturday night.

Nana worked at Woolworths, and for the duration of the war, spent her evenings on a rota as a fire watcher on the roof of the Bedford store. She may have been old enough to watch for incendiary bombs and to marry her Charlie, but she still wasn’t allowed to see Glenn Miller’s band play at Bedford Corn Exchange. She remained with her parents until Grandad returned, after six years at war, his discharge papers noting “exemplary service”.

By the time this photograph was taken, Grandad had made it back from Dunkirk, unlike many of his comrades. Outgunned and forced to retreat, he had spent several days on the beach, waiting to be returned to Britain. He was in the water for hours with his fellow soldiers, enemy planes overhead, waiting for the boat that would take his unit to a waiting frigate. He would have boarded, had another unit not taken priority. A German Stuka dropped its bomb straight down that boat’s funnel, obliterating all on board. Grandad had many near misses during his active service – but always believed that he would return home. I’m glad he did, or I wouldn’t be here – and I wouldn’t have known such a lovely man. I remember paddling in the sea with him when I was small, having been bribed with a £1 note by Nana. I was afraid, although I had no idea of the sorts of things that might have happened on beaches. We were both non-swimmers, but Grandad’s was the only hand I felt safe holding.

When I look at this photograph, I am so proud of them – of their resilience and determination. I am particularly amazed at the experiences apparently filed away in the mind of this quiet man, and grateful for the happy memories he gave me. I wish they were still here, so I could tell them how much I appreciated them, and discover more about their lives together.

Tracey Kitchen

Playlist: My summer as a ferryman

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by the Beatles

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies / Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly / A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”

In 1967, before health and safety and risk assessments, I worked my summer vacation as a ferryman on the Manchester ship canal. My job was to stand at the stern of a 20ft open rowing boat and scull passengers, gondolier-style, on the five-minute crossing between Flixton and Irlam, which sat on opposite sides of the canal. There were no lifejackets, no communications or backup engine and I loved it. For an 18-year-old student, it was a dream job – fresh air, independence, exercise and good banter with the passengers. Not to mention an adrenalin rush when you were halfway across and a tanker ship appeared from round the bend.

That summer, I was delegated to do the night shift. After about 11pm, when the pubs had closed, there were few people needing to cross the canal and I spent most of the night in the ferryman’s shanty on the Irlam side, reading, or listening to the Beatles on a cassette player. I was a founder member of the Beatles’ fan club, a devout fan. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had recently been released and proved a seminal moment in my relationship with their music. I was pretty much obsessed.

One balmy evening when all was quiet, a good friend and fellow Beatles maniac turned up at the shanty with six bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and some “recreational” cigarettes. There was no traffic on the canal at night, so we slipped the ferry boat off its moorings and drifted out into the starlight. We lay back to the sound of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, got merry on the beer and pot, and voiced profound thoughts, which in the cold light of day were probably rubbish.

Hours later, we were flaked out in the cabin when I was disturbed by a frantic clanging sound. A passenger on the opposite side of the canal was anxious to get to work and was venting his frustration on the call bell. I then realised that my buddy had woken early, taken my boat over to the other side of the canal and disappeared home. I quickly got on my bike to cycle the quarter of a mile downstream to Irlam locks where I crept under the lockmaster’s window (he was my boss), across the lock gates and back up the other side to rescue my boat.

The LSD song always transports me back to that night on the canal – to blossoming adulthood without the responsibilities, the starry night and the verbal abuse I received from a passenger late for work. Some years later, I heard that the lockmaster knew exactly what had happened, and had taken great delight in my panic and subterfuge.

Anthony Morgan

We love to eat: Dad’s Weetabix and clotted cream

Ingredients
Weetabix
Clotted cream
Caster sugar
Milk

Take a Weetabix, add a layer of clotted cream (as thick as you dare), then sprinkle liberally with caster sugar. Add a little bit of milk around the Weetabix to soften, and enjoy.

It sounds disgusting but it is rather good. The Weetabix acts a bit like a scone, setting off the cream and it is all about the cream. I hasten to add that this was a rare treat, reserved for high days and holidays.

Dad didn’t have a sweet tooth and wasn’t keen on puddings. He did, however, have a lifelong passion for clotted cream (perhaps linked to happy childhood memories of the West Country). Puddings were only tolerated if liberally smothered in Cornwall’s finest export. We used to joke that Dad had Weetabix/strawberries/meringues/treacle tart as the accompaniment to the cream, rather than vice versa.

In the late 80s, clotted cream wasn’t as readily available as it is now and ensuring sufficient quantities for Christmas (it is far preferable to brandy butter on mince pies and Christmas pudding) required careful planning. One year, Dad ordered an ice-cream carton’s worth of clotted cream from the high-end deli near the bank branch in London where he worked. When he went to collect the order, the deli had to confess that they had forgotten it. My dad was an extremely polite and restrained man, but the thought of Christmas without clotted cream was too much and, to the embarrassment of my middle sister (who had gone to work with him that day) – he demanded that the deli find a solution. Later that afternoon, a delivery of clotted cream from Fortnum & Mason arrived at his office in a taxi. That story is repeated whenever we eat clotted cream.

Dad died in 2014 and is a much missed husband, father and grandfather. At family celebrations, clotted cream (although not normally on Weetabix) helps us to remember him.

Juliet Phillip