Sometimes, the smallest things become the strongest proof of who someone was.
An unassuming book, for an unassuming woman. At least that’s what Laura Williams had thought about her nan, who passed when she was young. Her recipe book, kept in a broken ziplock bag, with pages that had begun to peel away from the spine, and the odd strip of tape hastily attached in a bid to save it. A call back to when all recipes were physical, and personal, and not just on the phone in your hand and borrowed from a stranger on the internet. But during 2020 when everyone suddenly had all the time in the world, Laura felt inspired. And carefully opened the book.
“I didn’t really know my nan for very long. I remember her sleeping on the sofa after Christmas dinner, and I remember when we moved her into a care home. But by that time I don’t even think she remembered herself.”
Joan: a pint-sized lady, with pure white ringlets, lavender wire-framed glasses, who could be outspoken when she wanted to be.
Yet, an entirely different woman existed in the stories her Grandma had told her. A mother who spent her days on building sites, operating cranes, and then coming home and cracking on with the tea. “The men who all worked in stee,, they’d all get home and go to the pub for a few, and all the wives would stay home and cook tea for when they got back.”
The notion leaves a poor taste in Laura’s mouth, but her Grandma reminds her ‘that’s just what they did’. Every week, for years on end. “She got the joy out of everyone enjoying her food, especially when everyone was absolutely shattered because everyone had such demanding jobs. It’ll have been her way of showing love.”
Stories of custom birthday cakes, Christmas cakes, things baked in ornately designed cake pans or simple tray bakes, then lathered with homemade jam or some sort of preserve. Laura never had a chance to try any of it, but the immediate smile on her mum’s face when she asked about it said everything she needed to know. Never anything that belonged in a creative round on the Bake Off, but could live happily in a bakery window before getting snatched up.
Fifteen years since Joan passed, Laura’s love for baking has been ignited.
“I’m really excited whenever I get a chance to use one of her recipes. Her handwriting is gorgeous, but absolute chicken scratch in places. Some parts the ink has run and its all smudged. The later few pages say nothing but bang this, this, and that in, give it a mix, and whack it in the oven. Which isn’t the most helpful recipe I will admit. But my Grandma has assured me that I’d be doing her proud, whenever I bring her a new recipe to try, and that’s more than enough.”
For David Child, he was more than aware of the hobbyist his Grandma, who he called Mommar, was. Just not quite to the level he expected.
“I remember getting a text from my mum, just asking if I wanted wool. Which was a bit of a weird text until I remember they were clearing out my mommar’s house a few months after she’d passed. Then I opened the attached image and just… The entire back bedroom was just a stockpile of wool. Like it was a wholesale, or the markets, or something.”
His mommar had always loved to knit. Eyes locked onto the television, or perhaps whoever she was having a conversation with, but without fail her hands would be fast at work creating something with ease.
“I remember so many Christmases, birthdays, anything where there was a gift involved. She knitted the lot: scarfs, gloves, socks. Jumpers for school, cardigans for my sisters. Usually in a colour you liked, but sometimes she’d go rogue and I’d end up with something my parents would force me to wear at least once.”
Passed down from sibling to sibling, then on to the younger cousins, and then into the attic. Somewhere between the Christmas tree, and his sister’s old toy houses.
“I don’t knit. But I took the wool anyway, in the colours I think looked most like the ones I used to wear. My colours. My daughter picks up new hobbies whenever she fancies something new, so I don’t doubt crochet or knitting will be far off. Her cousin already uses the wool she had to make all different bits of things, clothes and bags. It’s really impressive.”
He finds the whole thing bittersweet. “The photo with all the wool. It’s odd to look at. Almost like with the amount that she had bought, she expected to get better, like she’d insured her health because she’d bought what felt like five million balls of wool. But I’m glad I took some, and I’m glad it’s being used. But I haven’t had an offer yet if I’d want anything making, but maybe next Christmas. If I’m going to keep getting socks every year I wouldn’t mind a pair in my own custom colours.”
All her memories live on the other side of the country, for Katie Ellis, in a quaint holiday cottage, the but a fragment of them lives in the two pot dolls that sit on the top of her wardrobe.
Holidays in Blakeney, a village in Norfolk: passing through, staying in a cottage, or taking a day-trip to cross it off the list, were a must. “I was little when we went, and it always felt so special. Looking back, my parents must’ve been so sick of going to the same parks, the same pubs, the same crappy little souvenir shops after we’d been crabbing.”
The heart of the memories existed just off of the main road, a small stretch of houses each with bay windows, and perfectly kept gardens, guarded by ornate metal fences. Like something out of a story book.
“In the house two doors down from the cottage we were staying in, there was a dollhouse sat in the bay window. Not like a Sylvanian family mansion or anything I was used to, it must’ve been hand-made. It was so pink. I was in love. I really wanted to live in it. And by chance, one day we were walking back home to have dinner, and the couple who it belonged to were sat in the garden.”
Katie thinks the joy of that day was equally shared between herself and the elderly couple, who suddenly found themselves tour guides of their own home. “Their faces just lit up. And then I asked if I wanted to come inside, and then there was somehow more dolls, more dollhouses, all set up with little furniture. The room had wrap-around shelves with so many dolls. It blew my little mind, I was truly enamoured with it all.”
The rest of the holidays consisted of that: a day out, come home, and then go see the dollhouse. Each day, a closer glimpse into this couple’s collection. “The way I was bounding around like an idiot, excited out of my mind, as if I’m not surrounded by insanely delicate and precious things. But they never said a word. So we visited them for maybe two or three years, stopping by in the car if we weren’t actually staying nearby.”
At some point, Katie’s mum broke the news that the family were looking to holiday in Wales for a while. Somewhere new, somewhere cheaper. And then, sat on the rug in front of the very pink dollhouse she had first seen a few years ago, she was given something very breakable, but very precious. A parting gift.
“The old man reached up to one of the shelves, an pulled down one of the most beautiful dolls I’d ever seen. Brown curly hair, a straw hat placed on her head, and then a lovely blue dress with little lace details, and tiny cotton socks and lace-up boots. She has these cherub cheeks, and painted eyelashes, and she’s so delicate that I really am terrified to pick her up. My sister has one too, with a floral dress and blonde hair instead. I think anyone else would find them terrifying, but they mean so much to be that I could never consider them anything other then precious.”
Katie hasn’t been back to Blakeney since they decided they fancied a holiday somewhere else. “I don’t think I’d want to. It wouldn’t be the same.”
More than likely, Katie thinks, the pink dollhouse no longer sits in the bay window, and the many dolls have been packed into a box and moved elsewhere. The couple was rather old, enjoying their retirement by the seaside. A part of her memories would be spoiled if she returned, expecting the same storybook cottage, only to be meant with any other generic home. Any idea of the elderly couple that once lived there, disappeared. So Katie decides she won’t go back, at least not for a long time. Until she’ll just take care of her dolls, now entrusted in her care. In that way, she’s keeping their memory alive.