My Nan

She was old before her time, but I always knew her for the love she expressed.

Long white hair, right down her back, which each morning, she would brush and then plait.

She had no teeth when I first knew her and would suck barley sugars on her gums, which always made me laugh!

She would giggle that her little grandson found this funny.

An old lady who brought up six children in a two up two down Victorian terraced house, with no bathroom and only an outside toilet.

When I stayed with her, she would wash me in an old tin bath in front of the fire, before going off to bed.

She never owned a washing machine and only ever had a cold tap in the scullery, cooked on a primitive gas cooker, yet her children were always well fed and went to school in clean clothes.

Here name was Florence, but everybody called her Flo.

Never once did she complain about her life, even when she was put in a local asylum for a week because she had had a diabetic fit.

She was the most beautiful woman I have ever known.