A long time ago I shared old family photos but they will be new to many, so here they are again.
Above, on the left, is my father’s father, Thomas Charles. He was a blacksmith at the Sunbeam Motorcar Factory in Wolverhampton, England. I think this photo was taken for a newspaper on his retirement, probably in the late 1950's. Nandad passed away when I was eleven.
My father described him as very 'Victorian' and I found him a little scary at times. I was a very active, all-over-the-place kind of child and Nandad - as all of us grandchildren called him - thought that children should be seen and most definitely not heard. On one occasion I had done something he disapproved of. I ran over his foot when playing with my cousins. I remember my beloved Nanny’s soothing voice saying to him, as I literally hid behind her skirts, "Now Tom, she is only a child."
I often think how nice it would have been to know him as an adult, to let him know that I turned out okay and to reassure him that what he perceived as a naughty little child, turned into a pretty straight arrow kind of an adult, with a few Victorian ideas of her own.
