Regretably, my mother's mother is best remembered lying in a bed, quietly dying of breast cancer, but still managing to embroider the most amazing flowers and Jacobean crewel work right up until the cancer took her eyes. She taught me to hold a needle and gave me my first embroidery piece to work. I still have some of her silks and the last piece she worked on.

The photographs I have of her before her illness show a lively and energetic young farmers' wife who could feed the extended family and the farmhands with a 3 course meal from what appeared to be a pound of mince and a bag of apples.

My other grandmother was a single mother aged 16 in the late 1920's. Photos show her dour and unsmiling, even at family weddings. I remember her as larger than life and very self-possessed, you dare not cross her or speak out. She was always known by her surname and was not immediately likeable. She ruled the family with a rod of iron, even when confined to bed or a wheelchair with illness. Above all, this grandmother was for obeying. Or else.

Grandmothers are for taking after; I'm very glad I took after my mother's mother!

LTS