My Mum, She's a Firestarter!

My great-grandfather William ‘Tatty’ Thompson came back from WWI a hero and settled back in home in Swaledale. He worked as a farmer, interlaced with lead mining. He married, and had two daughters Isa and my grandmother Joan.

This post fast forwards to the 1960s. Tatty was now widowed and lived at the family farm with Joan (my gran), her husband Lesley (my grandad) and their two children David and Sue (my mum).

Sadly, my grandfather Lesley died and Gran was widowed with two teenage children before she was forty. I would like to say that Tatty was a great support through this time and yes he had his moments but I will not be drawn into rose tinted memoirs and admit he could also be a sod of the first degree!. He was charming yet equally awkward.

He adored his grandchildren and Mum & Uncle Dave treat him to no end of practical jokes. There was the time Mum let him eat an oxo cube he’d mistaken for chocolate. Or when they carried him out on his favourite chair as he had one of his famous ‘just resting his eyes’ moments so he woke up an hour later in the front garden. Or the time they drew a smiley face on his bald head (once again during a ‘resting me eyes’) and let him go to the village pub for a darts match. He hated it when they didn’t do such things.

A number of years later my gran remarried and in time moved with her new husband, John to a farm just outside of the village. Now in his seventies Tatty was to go with them but refused. Moving a whole two miles from the village was akin to asking him to emigrate to the otherside of the world. He was remarkably stubborn about this. I had arrived by this time and despite blackmail attempts with me as bait etc he would not budge.

In defiance he bought the most run down caravan and plonked it in a friend’s field. It was a horrible little hovel. Gran was embarrassed, Mum was mad but he would not move. Mum and I moved into the village and had a little shop. Tatty would walk along, warm up in our house but would not be prised from that bloody caravan.

Then one day he came to our shop and had a massive heartache. He was taken to hospital where he stayed for quite a while. And so my mother’s action over diplomacy went into overdrive.

She organised a flat in the old people’s complex in the next door village. It was lovely; each flat had a bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom. You lived independently but there was help on site if you required and a lovely day room and communal kitchen. It was a short walk from the village centre.

Mum decorated every inch of his flat, furnished it, stocked the kitchen. And then came her moment of real action.

She prewarned the local bobby and farmer (both friends) and went to the caravan. She salvaged personal effects, doused the caravan in petrol and lit it.

The day she picked up Tatty he demanded to be taken home to his caravan. "You can’t" she replied, "I burnt it down and have set you up in a flat."

With this she was condemned as a bitch, a bugger and he would never speak to her again.

For a fortnight she took him homecooked meals to the flat, cleaned up and he sat stony faced until day 15. After discovering he was one of only two men in the complex, and the ladies thought he was there to be spoilt with their endless baking and games of whist, Mum was warmly greeted by a smiling Tatty chirping:

"By it’s grand here, a good idea of mine. I should have come here years ago."

Mum went up in a display to rival the caravan.

William+Thompson, old+age, retirement+home, family, families,

Comments

[tikkles]

Amazing, Beki.

Nothing at all you can really add to that.

[andrea]

Thanks for visiting my blog, Beki. Yours looks like soemthing I want to sift through at my leisure and I loved this post.

Annoying trivia: I can see from the photos of you as a child and as an adult that you have the same hair as me -- same style and same colour (strawberry blond as child gone more blond with age).

[Sharon J]

He sounds quite a character :-)

[Attila the Mom]

Just beautiful! What an amazing memory!

[Marjory]

I will e-mail you soon...

Nothing to add to this except, unless this is offensive, I could see your Mum being up to torching said caravan amd I'll bet it was the only way!

You're so lucky being able to remember your great-grandfather. The last of that generation for me died about 4 years before I was born, but I grew up with stories about all of them.

[A.N.Body]

What a kind and caring person your mum must be to go though all that ,I envy you

[Kate]

I love this post :-) Like the pic too - I used to have those slippers in pink.