When my mother died suddenly in 1979 at the age of 57 we were shocked, upset and didn’t know what to do. It fell to me and one of my brothers, Paul, to empty her flat. Furniture and household equipment was easy but what to do with ‘stuff’? Letters, photos and other ephemera went into a suitcase which I have carried around Britain with me ever since.

This year, 2017, has been a horrible year for our family. Both my brothers, John and Paul, got prostate cancer and while they were both very ill Paul asked to see some family photos, so for the first time in 38 years I opened the suitcase.

Amongst the papers and photos, I kept coming across letters from my grandmother to (mainly) her son, my father, her favourite. She never did approve of my mother who was Catholic, and was horrified that my father had changed his religion to marry Mum. My aunts used to tell me how spoiled he was, his 3 older sisters had to wait on him, clean his shoes and put up with it when he stole their sweets, becasue my grandmother would not hear a word against him.

I realised there was a chain of the weekly letters stretching from 1956 to 1961 when Granny died, although it’s not complete by any means. We left Jersey in 1956 and Granny wrote every week whether there was anything to say or not. Usually there was not but there was always family gossip to be related.

I have collected the letters together and after reading a few of them thought there would be some merit in putting them all into a blog for our children and grandchildren, and anyone else who might find life in a small post-war, post-occupation island interesting.

In the next post I will list out the main characters who will appear in the letters, but here is Granny and Dad.

Granny and Dad before the war