Wednesday 1st September 2021

I can't believe it's September already, how summer has flown by I shall miss the warm days and the sunshine, let's hope I get good weather in Newquay.

When I was 7 years old (I believe it was a Sunday) I was sat on a small footstool and flipped through some of the gran's photo albums that had been left there.  I came across a photo of gran, grandad, aunt Maria, aunt Joan and mum all sat posing for a photo which had been taken in Bournemouth.  I suddenly started crying because it all seemed so sad that half of them were now gone and I couldn't be with them.  For some stupid reason I thought if I could, I would join them in the photo and never have to say goodbye.  But sadly life doesn't work that way and death is so cruel.

I remember when Aunt Maria was in the hospital and I wasn't allowed to visit her, now I know why because her immune system was messed up.  A lot of it was to do with her smoking, I can just about remember her and also being wheeled into a room at Salisbury Infirmary while mum and aunt Joan went up to visit her and dad stayed downstairs.

There's a lot of things they never discussed in front of me, like how aunt Maria couldn't keep her food down, the doctors tried everything they could; so they had to use a drip in the end.  Aunt Joan said when she died, that she felt aunt Marie's spirit leave her body late one night and knew she had gone; how sad is that.

I remember once I was walking back from gran's with mum past Victoria park and aunt Maria came on her bike down castle road and came over to talk to us.  I think it was a black frame bike she had, I often wondered what happened to it after she died.  

I don't think gran was really the same after Aunt Maria died, and now I sat on this stool looking at a photo of them in happier times made me sad.  Then a red admiral butterfly flew in through the back door, I remember catching it and taking it outside.  

My mother and aunt Joan were in the back garden, they say a butterfly could be the spirit of a dead person coming back; perhaps it could have been gran returning to say a final goodbye.  

I remember I fell on a nail in the back garden that (for some reason only known to him) grandad had put it, it winded me.  

End of the 1970s, end of an era and the end of the carefree days when I visited gran on Sunday's.  We always used to go home after tea just as Crossroads or Emmerdale farm was starting, at teatime gran always used to put the glass butter dish out in front of the fire and the cutlery rattling onto the table.

Sometimes after it rained and it was dark, I used to try and peer through the raindrop's on the window to see if I could see any patterns in the orange glow of the sodium lamps.  Sodium lamps are being phased out now for LED's and don't have that same glow like sodium lamps have.

I think when we left, gran used to wave from the living room window.  I never knew that one day it would be the last time I would see her, Mrs Dyer (who's gone herself) said she missed her as did I, and still do.

Times were different then, uncle Mike had a larder car, it was blue and I remember sitting in the back seat while going up grans.  I got shouted at by aunt Joan for putting my hand out the window. I remember the ticking sound every time the indicator light's were put on.  

The world since the 1970s is a much more dangerous place, and if we don't do something about the environment we won't have much of a world left.