Radio Programme #1: Woman's Hour on Grandparents
Programme: Woman's Hour
Station: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Mon 9th April 2012, 10.00am
Available Until: Monday 16th 2012
Website: Woman's Hour 9/4/12
I used to listen to Woman's Hour a lot back when I was a student/unemployed, but alas now that I have to work for a living I rarely catch it due to the time it broadcasts. For those not in the know, it's a fairly intellectual, vaguely feminist magazine show based loosely on things woman-related. It's subtitle "Celebrating, informing and entertaining women" gives you some idea how broad its remit is!
Anyway, since Monday was a bank holiday I managed to catch this episode devoted entirely to the subject of grandparents, and it was lovely. There was this particularly wonderful story from Virginia Ironside:
One day I had one of my grandsons to stay when he was small. At about five in the morning he puttered downstairs saying it was time to wake up.
"Granny, Granny!" he said. "Wake up I've got a great idea! Let's get up and play - you go down to the end of the garden and be a monster, and I'll be a knight with my sword and I'll come and kill you."
A little while later as I stood waiting behind a tree, shivering in my dressing gown in the cool dawn light, at the start of a long, long day, making monster noises, I realised I was very happy. Isn't it great being a granny?
And also this poignant email from one man:
My grandparents have been hugely important to me all my life. Their love and support has been especially important at times when I've felt quite lost and lonley. When I was at boarding school, leave weekends with Granny and Grandpa felt like times of refuge. Their home was a place of sanctuary and security. Little things - electric blankets, apple pie and ice cream, breakfast in bed - told me that I was loved and that the world could be a good place. I would really love to be able to say 'thank you' to my Granny on Easter Monday.
The programme got me thinking about my own paternal grandparents, who have always lived near us and who I have spent a lot of time with my whole life. I have particularly fond memories of days I spent with them as a preschooler when they devoted their time utterly to me. I used to make pastry with Grandma, for cheese flan or chicken pie, and then we'd chase Grandad with the rolling pin! (He was quite a good sport - I also remember we tied him to a dining room chair.) Grandma is quite musical and she taught me lots of songs (or fragments of songs) and taught me to waltz with her singing as the only accompaniment ('Who's taking you home tonight?' by Vera Lynn). When my mum came to pick me up she's often be treated to a performance of 'The Dying Swan' by the two of us, complete with Grandma lala-ing Swan Lake as we danced!
They were both very touchy-feely people, and there's a lovely picture of the two of them from about ten years ago with their arms round each other, squeezing tight and looking so happy. I remember that even when I was quite old we would have huge three way hugs!
Grandad was a man who was really interested in things. Even though he wasn't an educated man (he left school at 14, like most people of his generation) he read voraciously on a huge range of subjects. He's the only person I know to have read A Brief History of Time all the way through, and he read bhuddist philosophy and taught himself to meditate in his 70s! He painted and drew beautifully too, and again that was all self-taught. It wasn't all high minded intellectualism though - tell him a fart joke and he'd laugh til he cried!
It feels good to remember times past with the two of them, especially since Grandad is no longer with us and Grandma (who has advanced Parkinson's) isn't really the person I knew as a child (and much as we love her, caring for her isn't always easy and can cause a fair amount of family friction).
Well done if you read all that! I don't think my future entries will be this long - the subject rather ran away with me.
Feel free to comment with anything that this post sparks off in your mind - you don't have to have heard the programme. Oh, and I should probably say - BBC radio (unlike the TV) can be listened to even if you aren't in the UK. :)