Visiting My Nan And Grandad

A Memory of East Ham.

I remember as a young girl going to visit my grandparents house in Monega Road, Manor Park.  They lived in a three-up, two-down with a funny type coal shed under the stairs!

I can remember walking down the tree-lined street with my grandad, I must have been about 3 or 4 and he knew everyone he saw in the street.  They lived a few doors away from the Monega Road School, which both my Mum and Uncle went to as little un's.  They then moved on to the Grammer schools (separate ones, of course).

I can still remember the smell as I used to walk into their house, of stale cigarettes and old spice.  The sight of my grandad using what I know now as a cut throat razor and his face lathered in special soap!!!!

These were I think the happiest days of my childhood, when they had upright wooden chairs with tapestry seats that you sat on in the back room, because the front room with the sofa was for special occasions!!  The television set that you had to put on 10 minutes before your programme started so it could warm up, and sitting up my nan's butterfly table for lunch, which would normally be egg in the window (fried egg on a plate under a piece of fried bread with a hole cut out so you could see the egg!!, Nan always cut the white off because she said they were the chicken's feathers!!!!).

Sadly Grandad died in 1986 and Nan moved to be closer to us, but passed away in 1993. However every now and then I drive past the house and wonder who lives there and what they are like. I know that the neighbours are still there because I have seen them. The saddest thing is that I couldn't stop as I felt numb because my grandparents should have been there, but weren't.