The Autobiography of Steve Carleysmith

Possibly my earliest memory is staying with my Nana in her small attic flat at the top of a large house in Blackheath London. She had a clock that ticked very loudly and a stone hot water bottle which I'd never seen before. I could hear the sounds of the steam engines shunting in the yard on the river nearby. She had her large collection of paperback books (that I mentioned in my other piece on reading) stored at the side of the stairs. Nana (my mother's mother) was very friendly and full of fascinating stories. During the First World War she bored battleship gun barrels at nearby Woolwich Arsenal**. Between the wars she emigrated to Canada, for a while staying in a logging camp near the US border. Bootlegger lorries passed through and in the winter one of her jobs was to keep a small fire going overnight under a lorry engine to stop it freezing up in the Canadian winter. She returned to London before the next war. I wish that I knew why. I knew little of her husband who before I was born had gone to the North East reputedly after an affair. My mother would never have her father mentioned, and frustratingly I don't know why. All these questions that I should have asked.

One of my other early memories relates to my great grandfather (father's maternal grandfather) in Tunbridge Wells. To me he was "Bow Wow Grandad" because of the animal noises he made playing with me. I distinctly remember his large ear trumpet for deafness, and that he would give me half a crown of pocket money which was a generous amount then. He had been a horticultural researcher at the East Malling Research Station and developed new varieties of soft fruit. Some of you may know the popular Malling varieties of raspberries. There are many research publications under his name AW Witt. He died when I was less than ten years old.

We saw him once a month when we with visited my paternal grandmother and grandfather with whom he lived in Tunbridge Wells. My grandfather was often in poor health as he suffered from malaria caught in the First World War. I don't know here he fought. I have few memories of him but a vivid one is watching cricket at Southborough Common cricket ground sitting on the grass on a hot summer's day. He died before my teens. Each year my sister and I stayed with my grandmother for a few days, and I remember a bolster not pillows on the bed, and her excellent steak and kidney pudding. She was quiet, formal and traditional, in great contrast to my Nana who was outgoing and uninhibited and had worked in a London pub and a market stall, sources of yet more tales.

I'm fortunate that I enjoyed being with both my outgoing Nana and serious Grandmother, and I’m sure they both had an influence on me.

**From a BBC history of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich: "David Lloyd George, the Minister of Munitions from May 1915, made two big changes [on weapons production]. He increased government control over weapons production - then largely in private hands - and sought to bring women into the workplace. Nowhere was this felt more than in Woolwich, where eventually almost 30,000 women were employed."

Steve Carleysmith