Snapshot: Summers with Nanny-in-the-Park
Every summer while I was at primary school in the 80s, I stayed with my paternal grandmother as both my parents worked full time. She lived about 10 miles away on the outskirts of London and at the end of her road (a dead end for cars) was a park. Hence I called her Nanny-in-the-Park (my mother’s mother who lived in Wiltshire was Nanny-in-the-Country).
I never remember it raining those summers, though it must have. Days consisted of the morning stroll to the paper shop, where I’d be allowed a packet of Quavers, and back again to play in her lovely long garden.
Across the fence to the left lived the lovely Doris, affectionately known by me as Doll-Doll. Nan always said she was the kindest woman she had ever known. To the other side were Sis and Joe. Sis was a homely sort, who wore handmade cardigans and Joe smoked a pipe and grew tomatoes in his greenhouse – to me there was nothing sweeter than the smell of those tomatoes and Joe’s tobacco. Next door to them was a younger family with four children and sometimes I’d be allowed to have them round to play.
Lunch was usually cheese sandwiches on the whitest bread you’ve ever seen and if there was a nip in the air, Nan would also make a nice cup-o-soup. It always seemed dark and cold in the house, so we’d sit in the lean-to, which Grandad built before he died. It had a corrugated plastic roof and a washing machine you had to turn by hand.
When Joe died, Sis moved away to Cambridgeshire and some troublesome neighbours moved in. When Doll-Doll also died, Nan couldn’t stand it any more and moved to the same road as my dad on the east London/Essex border and then to Devon, which she loved.
Nan passed away last year and we now live in her house in east London. It never really felt like this was her home, though – to me she will always be Nanny-in-the-Park.
Elizabeth Miall
Playlist: Dad and the list of cars as long as the M4
Billy, Don’t Be a Hero by Paper Lace
“The marchin’ band came down along Maine Street / The soldier blues fell in behind / I looked across and there I saw Billy / Waiting to go and join the line”
Whenever I think of my late dad I always think of his love of cars. The succession he had were like an interwoven thread throughout my 70s childhood. His list of cars was as long as the M4 and the memories of these always make me smile. The picture, right, shows me on Dad’s knee in 1970, in Grandad’s gorgeous pale blue Morris Traveller, which we borrowed in between cars – when they’d conked out, as Dad said.
Mum never drove and never wanted to. She’d sort out sandwiches and tea in a Thermos flask and with my older sister we’d all go off on a jolly. We probably never went that far in all honesty but to us it was a big adventure. Hailing from south Wales we’d have trips over the Severn Bridge to England.
Dad’s tours took us all over the south-west and I remember singing songs from an early age in the back seat and particularly Billy, Don’t Be a Hero by Paper Lace. The lyrics didn’t mean much to me at the time but I loved singing the song.
Dad drove all his life from the age of 14 (before tests). He was a milkman with Unigate for a while and would pop by on the milk float when I was small to say hello with a carton of orange juice. He was also a truck and van driver for Apex and drove a 70s Bedford. I recall an early memory of sitting in his van cab and seeing Big Ben – so we even got as far as London! I also remember the black mini-van we all squashed into one hot summer in 1981. It’s not legal now but we all did it then.
In our teens came the Hillman Hunter (a firm favourite) and then the ambulances. One year, Dad took us all to Blackpool in one but it broke down en route so we had to hitch a lift on a coach full of football fans.
As we got older, of course, we’d be more embarrassed by Dad’s car antics but when he got a red Cortina with an eagle painted on the bonnet (eat your heart out, Gene Hunt of Life on Mars), I think my sister and I loved it though we would never admit it.
So this song is special because it reminds me of the beginning of my journey.
Sandra Blemster
We love to eat: Granny Davies’s pork luncheon meat pie
Ingredients
1 large flan case
340g can of pork luncheon meat
420g can of baked beans
Mashed potato (roughly four large potatoes)
Blind-bake a substantial thickness of white pastry made with plain flour for a flan case. Cut the meat into rough 2cm cubes and spread evenly over the base. Pour the baked beans over the top and spread evenly too.
Pile the mashed potato over the top, sealing it to the pastry edge, and bake at 180C/gas mark 4 for about an hour until warmed through and nicely browned.
I clearly remember the first time Granny gave us this in the 1950s – it seemed such an exciting idea to have a complete meal in a pie.
However, I must have been on my own in this excitement because when I mentioned it recently to my younger siblings they couldn’t remember it at all. Then one day at the supermarket I was surprised to discover it is still possible to buy tins of pork luncheon meat.
My pastry-loving husband offered to help me recreate the pie but then I realised I couldn’t recall the order in which the ingredients were assembled in the pastry case. I consulted my cousin; she couldn’t remember the pie at all but she phoned her mum, who did.
This is not the normal sort of meal I generally offer to guests, but when my brother and sister visited me recently we all had it. They were really surprised how good it was. My sister’s friend said her kids would love it too.
Barbara Baldwin
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