My own earliest memory is from the age of three and I am in a wool shop with my Mum, and the assistant is asking her when the baby is due….”What baby?” I asked (or something like that). And so I learned of the forthcoming arrival of my brother, Paul. Paul’s birth affected me because my other memories of that time are of going to stay with my aunt and uncle and cousin Lynne in a village near Walsall. We had no extended family where we lived so it was thought to be the best thing to do. I’m not so sure that it was the best thing for me although I don’t remember being unhappy, but I did develop a rather bad speech problem at about that time and that stayed with me for many years. Apparently I returned home with a distinct Black Country accent.

My relationship with my grandparents was somewhat limited as both my grandfathers were dead before I was born, and my parents had moved from Huddersfield, where their two families lived, to Coventry, again before I was born. Nevertheless, I think I had a close relationship with both my grandmothers. The two women were quite different in many ways and to me and my brother and sister were referred to as Big Grandma (maternal) and Little Grandma (paternal), as you may guess, on account of their size.

Big Grandma, Mary Ellen, was born to a working class family in Middlesbrough, her father was a steelworker. She went into service aged 13 as a maid, and eventually met and married my grandfather, a gardener at the same house. Of course they then had to leave, as servants weren’t allowed split loyalties, and went to live in Huddersfield where Grandad got a job as a gardener in the Municipal Parks and Gardens. There then followed eight children, the seventh being my Mum; the eighth child, a little girl, died in infancy and was never talked about: my generation discovered her when my cousin was going through her mother’s things after her death. Big Grandma, Mary Ellen, died in 1969 having survived her husband by 40 years: having survived WW1 he died of TB, along with one of my uncles.

My memories of Mary Ellen are of a rather formidable woman who you didn’t mess with. She was the undisputed head of her family, and if she said, for example, that everyone would go to hers’ for tea on Boxing Day then everybody went, no question. I remember staying with her for a weekend when I was a student: she said she would cook me breakfast at 8, and when I crawled out of bed at 10:30 she stood over me while I ate it, which I did! She had 15 grandchildren; when she died she left us older grandchildren 5 shillings each, and the younger one 2/6d. We all loved her.

Little Grandma, Emmie Louisa, was quite different. She was several years older than my grandfather, which always caused her embarrassment. Her family owned a small shop in a village near Huddersfield where my grandfather, a tailor, lived. On starting his apprenticeship, Grandad walked from Huddersfield to Ashbourne where he started he then lived, aged 14. This was 50 miles so he might have had a lift along the way. They had two children one born at the start of WW1 (my aunt Mary) and one at the end (my Dad).

Grandad was badly wounded in the war and never really regained his health; he died of lung cancer in 1946. So grandma had two tragedies in her life, Grandad’s death and, perhaps more tragically the death of Mary, aged 10, from diphtheria. The experience was devastating for her: Mary was taken away to an isolation hospital where she was allowed no visits, she died and Grandma was not allowed to see her, she was sealed into a metal coffin and buried without any ceremony. I believe this was the standard practice for infectious disease at the time. This affected Grandma for the rest of her life, and, because she could not then bear to have girls in the house, my Dad saw very few girls. She visited us once a year for a few weeks in the summer, travelling by coach from Huddersfield to Coventry: what she couldn’t get in her small suitcase she would wear, and as she liked to be prepared for all eventualities she had some rather uncomfortable journeys.

My memories of Emmie Louisa are fond ones, although we only saw our grandparents maybe three time a year. She died following a stroke aged 75, I was about 12 at the time; she had been making a good recovery but when the doctor told her that she was being transferred to another hospital for rehabilitation she seemed to give up the ghost. In her youth the rehabilitation hospital had been the workhouse. After Grandma died Dad found Mary’s new, unworn Whitsuntide outfit carefully wrapped in tissue. She was a religious woman, and whenever I asked her when I would see her again she would always say that she hoped it would be soon, but she might be “going on a long, long journey”; she would however wait for me at the gates of heaven.

Reflecting on these memories I think what hard lives our grandparents had, and wonder what our grandchildren will think of us.

I never knew my maternal grandfather, John (always known as Jack) Harold Goodall, born on May 27th 1890 in Cosham, Hampshire. My memories of him come from what my mother told me about him. I know that she loved him very much and he loved her too, and she treasured that as, almost, every time she spoke of him, it was with a smile on her face. I know that he fought with the Green Howards, during the First World War, and was mentioned in dispatches. During the Second World War he was a council clerk of building works and lived in Caterham, Surrey.

My mother often recounted the way in which her parents met. My maternal grandmother was living in the small village of Nutbourne, West Sussex. Her mother must have had a photo portrait done of her, as a young woman, and the photo was in the window of the photographer. I am not sure where the premises were, perhaps Nutbourne, Pulborough or perhaps Bognor where my brother tells me that our grandfather lived once. Apparently my grandfather saw the photo and decided to seek the pretty young woman out. When he first saw her out walking he asked “Where are you going sweet maid?” and apparently she replied “A milking sir.” That was the start of the romance. I don’t know how old he was when he started courting my grandmother but they married in 1915 when he was aged 25 and she was 27 years old. They then created a family of six children (seven births; one still born) of which my mother was the youngest.

My mum said that she used to look forward to her father coming home from work and she would sit on his lap and comb his hair. He always made a fuss of her and she felt much loved by him. At this time they were living in Caterham, Surrey, and mum recalls that her parents would take her to the big departmental store in Croydon where she would look at the toys and they would have afternoon tea. He was a generous man and liked to indulge his family with what he could. During the war he was not adverse to obtaining food and drink on the black market, which it seemed was fairly easy to do, because of all of the troops stationed in and around Caterham. I think my grandfather may have been a member of the Masons, as mum used to talk about her older sisters and her mother buying lovely materials and having beautiful gowns made up for a yearly ball.

My grandfather was fortunate enough to be able to have a car and mum recalls them driving down to Bognor for holidays. I am not familiar with 1930s cars but mum used to say that she would sit on the outside of the back of the car on what she called a dickie seat, which she really enjoyed; obviously only in good weather!

My grandparents lived in a bungalow (I don’t know if they owned it or if it was rented) which was opposite a factory and also near an army barracks. Unfortunately this led to it being bombed during the war though, fortunately, not causing any fatalities in the family. Having family connections in the village of Watersfield, West Sussex, my grandfather moved them all to a rented house: Park View, Sandy Lane, Watersfield. At this time, this small village had a shop, separate post office, two pubs and a butchers. Like so many modern villages, it is now just houses.

My grandfather lived a good life and liked a good time which involved lots of outings, with his wife, out drinking. This led to him developing liver disease which he died of in 1945, aged only 55 years. My mother was 16 years old at the time of his death. My mother said she was a very innocent and naïve girl and young woman and it took her a long time to grow up. She thought this was partly because of growing up during the war years and being totally indulged and allowed to get-way with things because the adults around her didn’t know whether any of them would be alive the next day. When her father was very ill my mum told me that he used to slip in and out of comas. When he was dead he was, as was the custom of the day, laid out in his coffin in one of the rooms surrounded by strong smelling lilies. My mother said that she used to sit with him begging him to wake up before they came and buried him. It was a great shock to my mum when he died and it caused her to stop menstruating. She never liked the smell of lilies for the rest of her life.

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."

I had one grandparent, my mother's mother, Jean, who had an interesting history inasmuch as she was born illegitimately in Edinburgh to a nurse and a doctor. Jean's mother was sent to live in Australia and Granny Jean was passed around the family. Interestingly, when she was due to receive her pension, my mother had difficulty in doing this for her (Granny wasn't terribly able and was certainly a very needy grandmother) because her birth certificate was destroyed in a fire at the records office so no-one really knew if she was born in 1898 or 1897.

She married a lovely man when she was quite young and they had my Mum. Sadly my Mum's father died not long after the great war, of gas poisoning. My mother was very young. I guess that was a pretty familiar story back then. Granny didn't have much time for my Mum and she was sent to a Masonic Boarding school at the age of 7, which, from stories from my Mum sounded like hell. But that's my Mum's story. Granny didn't want to be shackled with a child so my Mum had to stay in the school during holidays whilst Granny had fun with boyfriends, dancing drinking. My Mum left the Masonic school and enlisted straight away to be a WREN in the Second World War.

Anyway, Granny used to come to lunch every Sunday and lived locally to us in Hove in a grotty little flat. I can remember going to her flat after school and huddling round her oil fire (remember those old round ones). She made me banana sandwiches with fag ash on them. She always had a cigarette dangling from her mouth and actually had a streak of yellowing hair where the smoke had risen to. She still went out to the local pub every evening and drank a few Guinness's.

She certainly wasn't a 'fun' grandmother or a 'nurturing' grandmother and looked extremely old, even when she must have been only around her 50s and 60s. Every Sunday she would turn up for lunch and bring the News of the World with her. My father would scoff at her choice of newspaper and then hide in the lounge reading it. I can remember Granny sitting at the kitchen table shredding peas or trimming sprouts, glass of Guinness in front of her and fag in her mouth. She was always in a bad mood.

My brothers and I just sort of tolerated her and on the very rare occasion that she baby-sat us she would grumble that my parents were out 'galavanting again'. If we were due to go on holiday then Granny would become ill a day or so before and give my Mum hell for leaving her on her own.

On Sundays I used to go to the end of the road to meet her from the bus before lunch and walk home with her. One Sunday, when I didn't go to meet her for various reasons, she was knocked down by a motor scooter that had been racing another scooter from Kind Alfred Baths to Worthing. She lost her lower leg and spent a long time in Hospital then into a convalescent home in Newhaven. We used to visit her every Sunday.

After a few months of botched operations, she came out and came to live with us. It was awful. The dining-room was converted into her bedroom and she spent a lot of time telling us all to be quiet. She picked on us all with nasty little jibes. I guess I was around 12 and my brothers were 4, 15 and 18. She used to poke my Dad with her walking stick and wave it around at us or our friends whilst insulting us. That lasted for about a year until they found a lovely care home from us, five minutes away and she moved there. My Mum and I used to visit her two or three times a week. She was still having a crate of Guinness delivered every week. She died around 1972.

My Father was the second to last of 14 children born to an affluent Irish family in Cork. He had nephews and nieces older than him. His parents, being elderly, died whilst he was a teenager and he 'ran away' to Brighton to work. I have a picture of his family circa 1912 before my father and his younger brother were born. So, I never met them and he certainly didn't talk about them much. I think his father was very strict, a trait my father embraced totally.

I did not know my father's parents. They were Orthodox Jews. My father was born in Warsaw; they lived in Zurich, and came to London and Brighton. His father was born in 1872 in Poland, and died in Zurich in 1915. My grandmother was born in 1874 in Vilnius, Lithuania. At some point they moved to Harrogate, with her second partner, an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, who edited a Yiddish anarchist newspaper. She had an up-market chain of gown shops - my uncle said in the film where Agatha Christie disappears - to Harrogate - the shop she visits was a replica of his mother's shop. They moved to Haifa in the 1930s.

My first home was in Cranbrook, where my father taught at the school. At some point we moved to my grandparent's house in Glasgow - I'm not sure when my father was teaching in Coventry. I think I remember listening to my grandfather's gold pocket watch, and possibly eating chocolate in front of a long mirror. My sister was born there two years after me, but I have no memory of that. I think I remember a train journey when we came to the village in Leicestershire when I was three. I think my grandfather must have died, because I remember my grandmother staying with us for quite a while - she babysat while my parents went out dancing in the village hall. 

I was sent to school when I was four and a half - because my mother couldn't cope with the two of us - we didn't get on - we were never close. She was as obstinate as my mother but from an early age I think, ambitious,

My grandmother was calm. I remember winding wool, but that was for my mother. My grandmother did extremely fine crochet, which looked like lace. She was also a good cook. She moved to a picture book cottage, roses round the door, etc. in Lincolnshire. The neighbours said a room off the dining room, had held contraband from smuggling brothers, and the bathroom downstairs had been the sister's shop. There were only four houses at Huttoft Bank, a few miles from another village. There was a big garage made out of driftwood. Across the road was a golf course and then the sea... lovely for us to go on holiday, but how terribly isolating for my grandmother who only rode a bike. She played the piano for the Mother's Union. We had her piano - she was an excellent site-reader - we used to sing Gilbert and Sullivan round the piano. She came to live with us for a while when she was flooded in 1953.

I remember playing Chinese chequers with beautiful marbles, and other games by the open fire - sea-coal gathered from the beach. At the beginning there was only calor gas, and the water had to be pumped with a lever at the sink, and she had flat irons, There were deliveries from the baker, and a grocer's van. She dressed crabs which a neighbour caught, and his sister reared chickens, which we saw from eggs, chicks to the table. My sister and I slept upstairs in a large feather bed, with a beautiful silk Turkish rug on the floor. There were things from China - a sailing uncle. My grandmother was very proud of her initials H.M.S. Helena Mable Sarah (born 1885). Her father's family went back a long way in the navy, her father was a marine engineer - and my grandfather (born1877) was an Admiralty Machinery Overseer. They met in Bermuda, and she had a jar of pink sand from Bermuda in a jar, and a full set of Dickens and H.G.Wells.

She came to live with us for a while when we were in London, but we were teenagers then, and my father didn't get on with her. She had her own room, and we became quite distant, although she and my mum were close. Eventually she moved to a house in Glasgow, which was near her youngest daughter. We met her family once when we visited her in Lincolnshire.

It was sad. I think as children, you accept what is and take things for granted. My children had good involvement with my mum when they were young, but when they became older and it is similar in my case, closer when the children are young.

My grandma was lovely, but I think I took her for granted. I think those holidays were therapeutic for my mum I don't remember my father featuring - and my sister and I enjoyed our seaside holidays. My mum would take us swimming, whatever stage the sea or tide was - really rough and breaking on the stone steps ....she was a great swimmer - and we would get back for breakfast, with marmalade in a green pottery jar with a bee on top and delicious warm soft rolls from the baker.

Both my sets of grandparents were divorced (which I think was unusual at that time) and I only really knew my mother's mother. She helped my parents buy their first house and she lived with us. In many ways in my early years I was closer to her than my mother. Her maiden name and married name was Truelove (she married her cousin). I always thought it was a lovely name but pleased it wasn't mine after talking to my cousins who had that name and got ribbed at school. When my mother was just learning to talk she couldn't say Mama but said Baba instead and from then on my grandmother was known by everyone as Baba. She was born in 1882 and died in 1976.

From my earliest memories up until was about 5 or 6 Baba and I spent loads of time together. Thinking about it, that was probably only about 2 or 3 years but it seems much longer. We both woke early and regularly went for "before breakfast" walks over the downs. I loved listening to her tell me stories about her early life. She was brought up in a pub "The Hanover Arms" in Rye Lane, Peckam, which her grandfather owned and where she lived with her parents and many of her fathers brothers and sisters. Possibly this is how she became close to the cousin she eventually married. When her grandfather died, the pub was sold and her father, with his share of the proceeds, purchased another much smaller pub, which she ran with him for many years. Her mother had died some time before this.

I remember her telling me about times during the Second World War, how the cowardly German pilots would drop their bombs as soon as they got over the coast of England rather than face the guns further inland (I'm guessing that was mostly propaganda). We played cards, did endless jigsaw puzzles together and I was always required to help her wind wool for her knitting projects. Thinking back it seems that there was always an item of knitwear being unpicked and re-knitted. I remember sitting there patiently with my hands about a foot apart, while she wound wool round them before it was tied into hanks and the wool was washed. When I was about 6 or 7 she said that she would love it if she lived long enough to meet the girl I marry but said that she did not expect that to be possible. I didn't understand at the time why it was unlikely, I guess mainly because I hadn't experienced the death of anyone I knew and expected everyone to live forever.

As time went on I spent more and more time with my friends and we became less close. She was getting frailer, didn't walk so much and I was getting into the things that boys do! I now feel a little sad that I neglected her somewhat in her last years, however when I learnt to drive I did take her out in my car a few times. Eventually she had to go into a nursing home and again I feel ashamed that I only visited her a few times. I did take Barbara to see her once though before she died and therefore her wish to meet my wife was fulfilled.

I grew up in an age when my every move and development was not captured on camera. I am currently the proud owner of over 3,000 photos and videos of my 10 month old granddaughter, so with that in mind I imagine that my first memories are genuine and unprompted.

My first three memories come from a time before I was three, in the form of strong multisensory images. The most interesting thing about these memories is that the sense of the world around me is proportional to my small size. I remember lying on a polished red tiled floor at my grandparents’ house, having tripped and fallen down a step in the middle of the kitchen. The step I am looking up at is imposing and appears to stretch high above me.

My second memory sees me toddling through a door from the garden straight into the cup of hot coffee left on the floor by my father. As I sit crying on the floor beside a huge kitchen chair, my mother dispenses bright yellow ointment to soothe my leg. I think I can hear a dispute between my parents on the dangers of hot liquids and small children.

And finally, of course, the home birth of my brother. I am looking up from the middle of a large single bed in a state of anxious anticipation, knowing that something momentous was happening, without knowing what it was. My father appears at the door and I am led into the other bedroom to meet the new baby. It was shortly after that I remember sitting on the stairs while my mother bathed the new baby and slowly and deliberately rubbing zinc and caster-oil baby cream into the brown and yellow wall paper of our rented house. Possibly the one of the most defiant acts of my life.

The first bit of this is very short. My relationship with my grandparents was minimal. My Mum's mum and my Dad's dad were both dead before I was born. My Mum's dad lived with her sister in a council flat in Bolton. He had very little in common with my parents and didn't have anything at all to do with me. My Dad's mum lived with his sister, who moved around the country while her husband looked for the ideal teaching job. The first address I knew was Barnstaple in Devon (never saw her there), then Millom and Whicham in Cumbria, where my grandmother died. I was 8, and remember it was 1965 as that was the year Churchill died. Again, although a fairly friendly person, we never had any deep or meaningful conversations!

I haven't got round to 'my love of reading' yet but I might as well get my grandparents out of the way. In contrast with some others I had very little, or nothing, to do with them and that little not good.

Mr paternal grand-parents are a blank somewhere east of the Odra. Let us call them A Gorski and B Anonymska. I once thought they might be Jewish, but it seems not, although they were probably the source of the small amount of Jewish DNA , if it is real, that shows up in one DNA test, along with all the stuff from Poland (mostly) the Baltic states and the Czech Republic. That was no surprise: from as early as I can remember I knew that I was half Polish.
My father was one 'Ronnie' Gorski, a Polish musician. He may have gone the rounds with Stanley Laudan's Polish Dance Orchestra; my mother certainly knew Laudan, who like most of his band, was certainly Jewish. There was a Polish resettlement camp nearby so it could have be there that the magic happened. Pan Gorski disappeared from the records after 1951, when his named popped up in a local paper in the Midlands, and from my life a good deal earlier. All I got from him was a name. Instrumental in that was my paternal grandfather, William Lee. He ran the local grocer's and general store. No doubt, like many of the lower middle classes, he wished to be thought of as respectable, so he must have been disappointed when his only daughter successively produced sons, in April 1947 and April 1948, after two summers of love with different men. My father, though the second of these,apparently offered to do the decent thing, but had a lucky escape when my grand-father sent him away with a flea in his ear because he was Polish .So I was born Ronald Lee, not Ronnie Gorski II. That at least is a relief.

It was common in those days for a child of an unmarried mother to be brought up by the grand-parents, effectively as a sibling. That was my brother's fate. However, I was the spare and also, apparently, looked too Polish for my grand-father's comfort. The immediate solution was to place me within the wider family. My mother's aunt Nancy, and her husband, Tom Bowler, lived in a big house in Watlington. They would adopt me and bring me up with their two younger children, my mother's first cousins,and my something-or-other cousins, who were in their teens .For a while I became their little brother. My earliest memory of all is of grand-aunt Nancy looking in on me as I lay in a cot. Rather it is now the memory of a memory. It used to pop up regularly and unbidden well into my teens, and I would strain to see more detail than it offered. Now it has to be summoned faintly by an effort of will.

I was on my way to being Ronnie Bowler, and no doubt living happily ever after, when 'sasser' (father) Tom died suddenly of a chest infection; Nancy died 6 months later of cancer. The family split up and I was back again with my mother, brother and her parents. I soon learnt the pecking order. I remember having a fight with my brother because he had been given a packet of fruit jellies. I hadn’t, and he would not share, or even give me one . I got a walloping from my grandpa.

I was being lined up for a children's home when a local woman walked into the shop and commented that I looked a nice little boy. My grandfather immediately made her an offer she couldn’t refuse and I was privately adopted when I was three; I remember going to court in High Wycombe and meeting a very tall barrister who had to bend to get through the door - thing John Cleese in his gown and wig.

Because of my age I was fully aware of what had happened and where I had come from - we still used the shop - and I would run into members of my former family from time to time. (Later, I even found myself at the same School as my brother for several years and, by a mutual understanding, we did not speak to or acknowledge each other at all.) My grand-mother, who would probably have kept me, always looked haggard; she was at least browbeaten. Lee could be very angry and even violent; years later I learnt that he had split my mother's head open with a stick. It was really my brother who had drawn the short straw. His mother became increasingly paranoid, delusional and hearing voices, and he followed suit. He is now mentally incapable of looking after himself and is in permanent care. I am the normal one.
My Bowler cousins-cum-siblings, Dorothy and Eric, came to visit me once after I was adopted but were discouraged from coming again, to allow me to settle into my new family. I did not see them again for 40 years. Then, one by one, they died of cancer. There were, I recall, three funerals and a wedding (the bridegroom, another of my generation, has since died of a heart attack). I last spoke to Dorothy on the phone when she was in her hospice and she cried about all the wasted years. I did not realise how close she was to death and I still feel guilty that I did not jump in my car the next day and drive to Oxfordshire.

Wiping the tears from my own eyes I continue . By adoption I acquired resident grandfather, Edgar Payne, but he wasn’t a cuddly old man. (He probably wasn't Edgar Payne either, his children thought that he was the son of the local squire and a maid, who had been palmed off onto a local family for a cash consideration.) He was jealous of his own position and envious of me. He would steal things that were meant to be mine. It was his hobby; he would wander down to the local shop (my ex-grandfather’s shop) and pocket, if he could get away with it, his Black Beauty tobacco. On the way back, if he was taken short, he would relieve himself in the street; he might as well have been a Belgian. I have one memory of his being taken back to Norfolk on a holiday, or rather of his return in the middle of the night. There were pebbles being thrown at the window; no sooner had he arrived than he had decided he didn’t like it and refused to stay, so they had to drive all the way back. When he died I went into school and said ‘Ask me how my grandfather is‘, ‘How’s you grand-father?,‘ He’s dead!’ We were that close. Besides, we lived in a 2 up 2 down cottage (soon to be condemned) and at last I had got a room of my own, complete with bedbugs. Things could only get better.

I do not remember any of my grandparents, but I do remember my step-grandfather George Washington Tremlett. More of him later.

None of my grandparents were born in the UK and my two grandfathers were dead before I was born. My maternal grandfather Paul Alexander Chetoulenko (possibly Chatoulenko) was born in Taganrog, Russia about 1880. He died in Vevey, Switzerland in 1917 of TB, having come to Switzerland to be treated for the disease. My mother Tatiana was born in Vevey in 1912 and she too had TB when she was very young. Her two sisters Sonia and Chouka were also born there. As far as I know, based on what my cousin, Sonia's daughter Tessa, and I have been able to discover, no photo exists of Paul.

My paternal grandfather Alfred Stroman Peckham was born in 1869 in either Niagra Falls Ontario or Niagra Falls New York and he died in 1942, I think, in Niagra Falls, Ontario. He and his father and some brothers worked on the Erie and Niagra Railroad. I know very little about him and my father never talked about him. I only found a picture of him when we were clearing out my mother's flat after her death. It is a typical staged 'family portrait' in their Sunday best and when I can locate it I will try and copy it.

So both my parents were born outside the UK. My mother married my father during the war and he was over here with the Canadian army. We were sent to Canada in about 1946 as part of the 'war bride' scheme and this is only time I met my paternal grandmother, Sarah Emma Peckham (born Guerin). I have a few photos of her with my Canadian cousins, but I don't remember her and again I will try to locate them and copy one or two. By all accounts she was a formidable woman with very strong views on subjects such as religion, the up-bringing of children and alcohol. She was against alcohol, whereas my father and his elder brother John (always known as Jack) both liked a drink. Their younger brother Guerin was like his mother and looked down on alcohol as the devil's work. I knew Jack and Guerin quite well and preferred Jack because he was more fun.

We were only in Canada for a little over a year and then we returned to England and my father never went back to live permanently in Canada after that. So the next time we visited Canada my grandmother was dead. I am still in contact with my cousins, but I have not been back to Canada for many years.

My maternal grandmother Blanche De Long was both in Philadelphia USA in 1886. She was a difficult woman and did not get on with any of her daughters and, I suspect, nor with her second husband George W Tremlett. They married, after the death of my maternal grandfather and lived in France. I believe George was born in France and certainly his parents lived in France and had a shop in Paris. After the second war Blanche lived in France, principally Nice, and George lived in England and ran a shop in London and the shop in Paris. Sonia had married a Welshman and settled in Enland whereas Chouka had married a Frenchman and they both stayed in France.

George was one of the nicest people you could meet. He had been in the First World War and was badly wounded and captured in 1917, but he never complained about his disability. I only knew when I was quite young and I remember he had an Irish terrier (I think) called Mick that had a very bad temper. He wouldn't attack you, but if you came too close he would bite you. Once when George was quite old and living in Eastbourne we went to see him and Mick cornered me in the toilet and wouldn't let me out. George told us that once Mick went out on his own and came back with a number of baloons in his mouth. He had obviously persuaded one of the seaside baloon sellers to part with some of his wares.

I will try and attach a photo I found which shows Blanche and George with my mother and father and my aunt Sonia and uncle Sandy. It must have been taken during the war, but I don't know where or when. My dad, obviously, is in uniform and George is the only one with a hit. He is holding an earlier Mick and my mother is standing behind Blanche. Sonia is looking an Mick and Sandy is standing behind my Mother. Finally, if you look closely at the photo, you will see that at least three of the people are holding cigarettes.

"Where is my mummy" are the first words I remember saying. I even know the date I said them - 12 th May 1949. I was three years and 11 months old and I was lying in bed next to Tricia, my 7- year-old sister. The woman leaning over us was my grandmother, Elizabeth Hughes, who was trying to put drops in our eyes. Apparently, we were both suffering from conjunctivitis. Her reply was that my mother was in hospital having a baby. That is of course why I can be so sure of the date. It was the birth of my brother David.

I don't remember being told my mother (Muriel Simkin) was expecting a baby. A few years later, my aunt (my mother's sister) also had a baby. I remember not being told about this until the baby was born. Maybe my memory is playing tricks, but it seems that it was something they did not tell children. It was as if they were ashamed about getting pregnant. As if they felt guilty about bringing another child into the world. In those days, for the working-class, it was always a massive financial commitment to have another child.

I was not really pleased that my grandmother was looking after me. I know that in most cases, spending a couple of nights with your grandparents is exciting. That was not the case in our family. Grandmother Hughes lived close by and I saw a great deal of her. I do not remember her saying anything nice to me. The only time she spoke to me she appeared to be telling me off. So different from my mother. I am not sure she ever smiled, unless she was being photographed. She appeared dissatisfied with life. Her husband (Thomas Hughes), who died when I was eight, played no role in my life. Tricia had fond memories of him as he gave her money for going to the shops to buy his tobacco. My mother told me that he was a lovely man but had a major flaw, he was an alcoholic. Although highly intelligent his drinking always held him back in developing a worthwhile career. I would image it was his drinking that made my grandmother so miserable.

My grandmother did not treat my mother very well. She nagged her in the same way she treated me. I suspect she resented having my mother. My brother David has done considerable research into our family. He discovered that my grandmother was pregnant when she had my mother. I am not sure my mother realised this, but my grandmother did once tell her that she was about to go to America as Sybil Thorndike personal maid at their home in Westminster, when she discovered she was pregnant.

In 1914, the year that my mother was born, Sybil Thorndike, was one of Britain's leading actresses. She had been discovered by George Bernard Shaw when she was a teenager. In 1908, she took the leading role of Candida in a tour directed by Shaw himself. She married the English actor and theatre director, Lewis Casson on 22nd December 1908. Elsie Fogerty, the founder of the Central School of Speech and Drama, told Sybil: "You're a lucky girl to have married Lewis Casson. It's the best voice on the stage, the purest production - and I hope you are worthy of it." They quickly had three children: John (1909), Christopher (1912) and Mary (1914). My grandmother obviously helped to look after these children as she continued with her career during this period. It also raises the issue of whether Thomas Hughes was my mother's father. Casson was a famous womaniser and is it possible that he was really my mum's father? The photograph below shows he has David's stare. But clearly, we have not inherited his speaking voice.

My father’s mother, Jane Simkin, also lived close but played no role in my upbringing. She claimed that she came from gypsy stock and that she could predict the future. My older sister, Tricia, used to tell the story that when we were very young, she predicted the future for us children. Tricia was going to suffer from health problems (she did) and my brother David was going to be very intelligent (he is). I was to be the lucky one. Except for two major tragedies in my life, she was right. However, as the golfer Gary Player once said, “the harder I practice, the luckier I get.” Or in the words of Confucius: “The more you know, the more luck you will have.”

My father’s father, John Edward Simkin, was killed during the First World War. It is a mystery why he volunteered for the British Army in 1915. Over 750,000 men had enlisted by the end of September 1914. Thereafter the average ran at 125,000 men a month until the beginning of 1915 when numbers joining began to slow down as news arrived back home about the conditions on the Western Front.

My grandfather had a reasonable job, an "envelope cutter" at the De La Rue & Company. In 1910, John Simkin married Jane Hopkins in Shoreditch. The couple's first child Elsie was born in 1912. My father arrived on 17th January 1914 in Finsbury. A third child William Valentine Simkin was born on 14th February 1915. He was 32 years-old with three young children and was under no pressure to join the army (younger men were given white feathers by young women if not in uniform).

Despite this he joined the Royal East Kent Regiment. He arrived at Boulogne with the 7th Battalion in July 1915. When he reached the Western Front at the Somme, he was attached to the 178th tunnelling company. Where possible, the military employed specialist miners to dig tunnels under No Man's Land. The main objective was to place mines beneath enemy defensive positions. When it was detonated, the explosion would destroy that section of the trench. The infantry would then advance towards the enemy front-line hoping to take advantage of the confusion that followed the explosion of an underground mine.

Soldiers in the trenches developed different strategies to discover enemy tunnelling. One method was to drive a stick into the ground and hold the other end between the teeth and feel any underground vibrations. Another one involved sinking a water-filled oil drum into the floor of the trench. The soldiers then took it in turns to lower an ear into the water to listen for any noise being made by tunnellers. When an enemy's tunnel was found it was usually destroyed by placing an explosive charge inside.

It appears that my grandfather was involved in tunnelling under the German frontline on 29th August 1915, when a mine exploded. He was killed with two other men. Five others in the 178th tunnelling company were badly injured. John Edward Simkin was buried alive and his body has never been recovered. His name appears on the Thiepval War Memorial.

I have often thought that he would have been the grandparent that I would have connected with and he might have become an important influence on my personality. However, I expect that like my other grandparents he would have turned out to be a disappointment.