Morden Memories

My grandparents moved into 12 Aberconway Rd when the houses were built at the end of the 1920s. My grandad picked the house off plan as it had the largest garden and he loved gardening. My dad and his sisters lived there until the war; both my aunts married and my dad joined the Navy. I was born in 1961 and used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents - every morning I would go shopping with Nan to Caters, or Sainsburys, or Woolworths, and every Christmas I went to see Father Christmas in the Co-op. Once a week we would go to the Library (now the doctors I think), and every Sunday I would visit with my dad, and Grandad would walk us to the Underground. My mum lived in Morden for most of her life, in Martin Way. After they married my parents moved away, but after my nan died they moved back in to Aberconway Road to help Grandad out. Mum survived the longest, passing away in 2000, and at that point we had to hand the keys back to the council...saying goodbye to that house was one of the hardest things I've ever done. At the start of the war Grandad buried an illicit supply of alcohol under the potatoes. Occasionally he would say "I'm just going out to turn over the potato patch"- and everyone knew what he was up to. When the V2 rockets came, Nan used to pray none would land in the garden, because "the whole street would have gone up!"