Grandma's War

Every now and then I scan in a few pictures from a big sack of loose photos that my mum, Kathleen, left behind. Quite a lot of them are of familiar family members, but there's a whole era of mystery surrounding the ones from before she met my dad. Some even have people cut out of them!

I really wish we could sit down with these pictures and ask her about everyone in them, but she wouldn't talk about her boyfriends (or husbands!) with us when she was alive, and so she's not going to start now.

As far as I know, during the war she worked folding parachutes etc and in a canteen at Portland, which is the big naval base near Weymouth in Dorset. She looked absolutely perfect to me, personifying the spirit and times of the 1940s when no-one knew what tomorrow would bring.

She met an attractive man there who took her home to near Port Rush in Northern Ireland. I guess it didn't work out, but we have a few pictures and I know she really liked Ireland, both North and South, and the people there.

Taken at Cushenden, Ulster.

I think this was in London with the Jenners who bought a sweet shop that I remember visiting.

At the end of the war she went into "the Rag Trade" as a seamstress in London. She stayed with the Jenner family who really became part of our family from then on. I think she had a great time in London, which is where I was born in 1950.

There's an awful lot we don't know and each time I find more photos I get more questions! Here's a few more snaps  at Picasa .