Here is a page dedicated to one of the most kind and loving people I have ever known - my dear late Grandmother.  Her name was Abigail Lily, but she did not like her first name and was therefore always known as 'Lily', or 'Groomie' to her fellow student nurses!  I used to visit my grandmother in her little cottage in a village called 'Deenethorpe' close by Stamford, Lincolnshire, one of our favourite shopping towns.  A former United States Air Force base was just up the road from her cottage, just a few of the old huts still stand. I really used to love those visits to my dear Grandmother. She trained as a young nurse in Snow Hill, Birmingham, and was a nurse in her mind all her life right up until she was in the late eighties. She loved the work, and used to leave Grandad for long periods of time to go to nurse the very sick.

Grandma used to take me to pick blackberries and mushrooms and all the other offerings of nature at harvest time. We would take our pickings home in a little basket kept especially for collecting. Then the next day we would get up early, and she would start to make Jam or Jelly or Pickles or whatever there was to be made. I would help her to make whatever she had decided to make, getting very messy in the process, I didn't care, I was having fun, and really it was lovely being able to have an excuse to finish off the remains of the produce she had made. One of her favourite baking days for me was when she made delicious 'cheese straws', that is small fingers of home made puff pastry laced with grated cheddar cheese, and cooked in the open wood and coal oven until they were golden and crispy on the top. I used to ADORE those. Sometimes I would eat them almost as fast as she could cook them, making the excuse I was just 'sampling the flavour'. She must have smiled on many an occasion I am sure, at the excuses I came up with to sample her delicious fare long before it was intended to be eaten!!  

There was a lovely old knarled Yew tree that stood in the middle of the lane. Granny's cottage was just a few yards from that lovely and very old tree. It stood absolutely in the middle of the lane! Traffic (what there was of it those days) had to go round either side of it! The old tree was encircled by some dry stone walling, and had a mound of grassy earth all around it. I thought it great fun to run up the track in the grass around the huge trunk and hide from view. As gran or grandad would look for me, I would just edge further round the enormous old tree trunk away from their sight!

Idyllic and wonderful days, something that will never leave me.  Photos to follow.