My Grandad..............

He was short and rotund, always wore a waistcoat over his shirt and laced up boots. He used a silver topped cane, apparently it was his stepfathers, that’s why there is a different name on it and yes! I still have it. Grandad was known as Jack French although his full name was John Richard French and was much loved by everyone he met. He was a postman and owned property on the Isle of Wight at one time. He bought the house in Blythsford Road from new and used to come up to Birmingham to watch it being built ............. yes! I have the deeds for it as well. I am just a hoarder by nature!

Anyhow he used to ride a bike over to Stechford to see us when his wife was alive as she lived in our front room. I don’t know when Nan came, she was just there and I never connected Grandad with her as she was just ‘Nan’ – I never knew her as a person, just someone who lived in the front room, confined to bed and whom the 'District Nurse' used to visit in order to dress Nan’s bedsores. She used tins that contained sticky gauze circles about 2” in diameter; I found a tin many years after she died – in the gas meter cupboard of all places.
Nan appeared one day as we were having our tea; she had white hair in a bun and was dressed in a full length pink nightie. She wandered through to the kitchen pretending to wash her hands and smiling a toothless smile at us. She never made the kitchen as Dad jumped up and guided her back to the front room. I don’t remember her dying or anything to do with the funeral – I have all the bills!! But suddenly we had a beautiful bed settee in the front room, browny green moquette. The back lifted up and the bed was pulled out towards you, ready made just needed straightening, this became my bed in Hall Green.