INDEX	February 5, 2025
Gloryhole days
When I was quite young I used to visit my grandmother quite often. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was to give my younger siblings, Simon and Mandy, more time with my parents. Perhaps it was because I was the first born in my generation and children were a novelty for my aunts, Audrey and June, who lived with my grandparents at the time. They were certainly very hospitable. I guess they spoiled me rotten. Although there were lots of people living in the house at that time, it was my grandmother’s domain. My grandfather had the garden where he cultivated spuds, loganberries and stuff like that. I guess he was still digging for victory. At some time he had tb and he was never a well man. He was invalided out of the army before he got to France to take part in the First World War. He had ptomaine poisoning thanks to the military getting sold poisoned food. He was a slow talking man. My dad said the women in the family used to have conversations between his words. He probably had a decent pension since he had been a skilled worker in the gas industry, nationalised at the time. My aunts both had good jobs. June, in particular. She was an NHS almoner, a high grade medical social worker. But there didn’t seem to be much money about. They had this enormous cold bath. I think it was ceramic or metal. Despite being freezing in winter I was only allowed to have an inch of hot water. Perhaps they were frightened I would drown. Like all housewives of her generation, my grandmother used to boil every ounce of goodness out of her vegetables; but I didn’t know any better since my mother did the same. Once I remember she served cauliflower, the first I had ever seen. But I didn’t get to taste it since the cauliflower was the personal property of my aunt June! After all that boiling I doubt if it was edible. But it was exotic. One of the things I liked best about my grandmother’s house was the jumble room, the gloryhole. This contained an amazing cornucopia of disused stuff, mainly junk. I loved it. I remember a wooden parrot , a flattened bird shaped object that balanced and swung to and fro if you pushed it in exactly the right way. Then there were exotic coins, Victorian Jubilee florins and farthings, that sort of thing. My grandmother said she would bequeath them to me. More dangerously, there was a pedal sewing machine that I managed to use to drive the needle most of the way through a finger! It is hard to believe that they are not still there. But I think the house has long gone along with all the people.
INDEX Jonathan Brind	February 5, 2025