Nanny

Happy Birthday today to my Grandmother Eileen, an early Christmas present for Harry and Sarah, in 1914.

Harry would not survive WW1 and here is Sarah in deep mourning for him, with baby Eileen unsure why everyone's sad.

Some of this early sadness I think stayed with her always.

They lived in Mile End, in London’s East End, and when the Upper North Street School was hit by long-range German Gotha bombers in 1917, killing eighteen 5- and 6-year olds, she wasn’t far away.

Had she been a little older, she too would have been under those bombs.

25 years later and still in Stepney, Eileen was at the mercy of new wartime horrors.

She worked as a First-Aider for the ARP and the family was twice bombed-out during those years.

Her sister Lily was a Type 1 diabetic, and when she wasn’t on duty or at work as a seamstress, Nanny would travel all over London on intermittent busses and on foot, avoiding bomb craters and smouldering, crumbling buildings, trying to find fresh bananas for her sister, which Nanny had great faith would keep Lily healthy.

A few decades on, she would do the same for me, when as a child I was diagnosed with the same thing, and she spent an absolute fortune on special chocolate and jam for me from the ‘big Boots’ that was several bus rides distant.

Nanny survived two World Wars, and a 25-stone Baby Me sitting on her.

She was smart and kind in a world where those qualities didn't necessarily help you survive; she didn’t give up, she tried her best and I am proud to be hers.

(And also sorry for denting her legs by sitting on her lap in 1976.)