Snapshot: Grandma does her bit on Armistice Day
This is my grandma, Joan Theresa Syrett (née Wagstaff), selling flags on Armistice Day 1918. She was born on 15 May 1915, the middle child of five. Her mother died suddenly when Joan was 15 and she had to help her father look after her younger brother and sister.
She went on to study at the Royal School of Needlework and at the age of 20 married my grandad, Philip Syrett. They were happily married for 75 years until his death when he was 98.
They had one child – my mother, Lois, who had two children, my sister and me. We now have five generations of women in the family, the youngest being my granddaughter, Alexa.
Grandma has had a very interesting life. In the early 50s, she joined the International Friendship League, where she made friends all over the world. She is still in touch with some of them today. Even though most are nearly as old as she is, several made it to grandad’s funeral in 2010.
She was also a successful artist and has sold many of her pictures. Her modern samplers still hang in Montacute House, the Elizabethan National Trust property in Somerset.
After Grandad’s death, my sister suggested that Grandma move to a care home near to her in Painswick, Gloucestershire. Joan is now 99 and has asked if she can have a birthday party when she is 100 next May. She is still physically fit but her memory is slightly less good now. She is very happy and content and always saying how well looked after she is.
We are looking forward to getting all the family together next year to celebrate her 100th birthday. I have no doubt that she will reach it.
Michaela Westlake
Playlist: Making sense of fathers and sons
Débris by Ronnie Lane
“Oh, you was my hero / Now you are my good friend / I’ve been there and back / And I know how far it is”
It’s 1971, I am 16 and a Rod Stewart and the Faces fan. But every now and then on the Faces’ albums, somebody other than Rod sings a song. It’s bassist Ronnie Lane (who co-wrote all the earlier Small Faces hits with Steve Marriott) and, before long, I’m more of a Ronnie Lane fan than a Rod fan. So when Ronnie quits the Faces in 1973 to go solo, it’s him I stick with, not Rod. It was Débris that clinched it for me.
Why am I drawn to this song? It’s both the lyrics and the music. “I left you on the débris, at the Sunday morning market ...”, sings Ronnie, and the word débris evokes not just a London Blitz bomb site (still not redeveloped 25 years after the second world war), but also the song’s theme – “what remains” – and, as it turns out, what matters.
The lyrics tell the true story of Ronnie having to bail out his lorry-driver father, who is short of cash during a TGWU strike. But this leads him to reflect on the evolving relationship between a son and a father, the son having to go his own way (as sons must) and then come back to forge a renewed relationship with his father, as friend rather than hero. That transition happens to us all and, as a son and father, I have seen it from both sides.
Musically, it’s a beguiling chord sequence and one that is easy enough for a beginner guitarist to learn. So at 18, still hooked, I get the relevant Faces songbook and start singing it – and it’s still in my repertoire as an open mic performer more than 40 years later.
Ronnie Lane kept this song in his repertoire to the end of his life, too, and it’s a favourite of Billy Bragg’s.
We’ve been there and back, and we know how far it is.
Peter Shields
We love to eat Dimma’s apple chutney
Ingredients
1kg mixed cooking and dessert apples
900g sugar
1 level teaspoon salt
About 15-20g fresh root ginger
This quantity makes about 4lb. Cut the apples into wedges, discarding the core. Peel the ginger, slice thinly and cut into fine slivers. Put everything into a large saucepan. Cover and put on a low heat until the sugar has melted. Don’t stir, otherwise it’ll turn into a mush. Remove cover, bring to full rolling boil and boil for three minutes. Remove from heat and put into clean, warmed jars, with jampot covers if you like. The chutney will keep like jam. Eat with Indian meals of rice, dhal and so on, though it’s also good on toast.
When I was growing up, our garden had an apple tree which produced copious quantities of fruit. They were codlings and you could eat them or cook with them, but there were sometimes just so many that my mother was hard put to find uses for them.
However, as an inventive Bengali cook, she would use the apples as one might use green mangoes in India: she would put them in split-pea dhal and even in fish dishes (though that was unconventional).
One of the better-liked things my mother – she is Dimma now, or Grandmother – made was this apple chutney. When she could get hold of mango ginger, she would use that and Bengali guests would believe they were actually eating green mango chutney. This picture shows a batch I’ve just made.
Gopa Roy
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