Vi No Apologies and No Regrets

Chapter 1

I will tell you about my family first of all, and I will start from the top down and then move on to the people in between.

My Grandfather was Jewish and was born on 7 October 1872 to be precise.

He was 82 years of age when I was born, although I knew he was old when I was a little girl it did not have any effect on me, he was a smart man who wore a Trilby hat a lot of the time when he was out, I remember him always being there, he was always the provider. I know he always wore a navy pin stripe suit when he went out anywhere. He had houses with tenants, I dare say he was to me a wonderful man but I was later to find out he had not always been of what you might call good character. During the war he was well over sixty and worked in the shipyards as a painter, he used to paint ships. It was not just the Germans in those days who treat the Jews harshly, it was our own people too, it is only recently that I have found that out, apparently the men working alongside my grandfather used to put nuts and bolts in his paint, petty I would say but my grandfather was not too worried about it at the time, other than to tell someone at home. He had I am told some family who emigrated to the Australia’s and some who emigrated to America too but other than that I know very little about them. He can only be described in looks as having a large nose and being almost bald, although as I remember he had a very fine covering of white hair. He spoke well and easily and not with what you would call a real Geordie accent. He always made my brother and myself speak clearly and as children we did not have what you would call a Geordie accent, in fact our accent was described later as a Jesmond accent, which I love to allow out now and again, it gives me the edge on some people especially when I wish to annoy them. I don't ever remember hearing him swear although my mother tells me he did, I don't ever remember with the exception of once see him take a drink of alcohol and that was at a funeral. I never saw him smoke either but I did see him spitting once and was very angry about it, spitting was a disgusting thing to do.

My grandfather used to have a house full of furniture, he used to go to the salerooms to buy it and I suppose he fancied himself as an antique dealer or something but if I was honest I would say he just liked to do the things he liked to do and that seemed to be filling the house with far too much furniture, most of which was not much good and made his house smell very moth bally. I loved him just the way he was just as long as he did not spit especially on the bus.

My grandmother was a huge woman who always gave me the impression of being very strong and much stronger than my grandfather who was skinny in comparison to my grandmother, I should point out that although I always knew my grandfather as my grandfather he was never married to my grandmother and none of my grandmothers children were actually his children, in point of fact he had no real blood children, not that any of us know about anyway.

I loved my grandmother very much but she loved my brother more than she could ever love me, I'd say she always tried not to treat us differently but somehow I always knew she loved him more. It made no difference everyone always loved my brother. My grandmother did all the things my grandfather didn’t do apart from smoke, she drank like a fish and would always allow my brother and myself a drink of her Newcastle  Ale, which just does not taste the same now as it did then. I remember when I was very young my grandparents lived together in the same house but later on they lived separately, I have no idea why they separated they just did. I did not like my grandmother’s feet, they always smelled and were very often dirty, in fact her room in which she lived was not very clean either, and that is an understatement.

She spent most of her days in bed as I remember watching the racing on her television, she used to gamble quite a lot and my grandfather did not like that much but to my knowledge said very little to try to stop her. When my mother and myself and my brother would visit she would always give us pocket money and send us to the shop for some  ale for her, the shop was just across the back lane. We would buy ginger beer in a  bottle with a proper stopper on the top; it was wonderful ginger ale in those days. When we got back to her room the fire, which was an open fire that she heated her very large kettle on would be roaring. It was always like this winter and summer. She would get out of bed sometimes when we were there to make a pot of tea and something to eat but not always, she was bas