Granddad

Herhimnbryn, who has been in the UK on a visit from Australia, recently posted an account and photographs of her trip to the National History Museum of Wales, at St Fagans near Cardiff. This brought back so many memories of my grandfather who lived a few miles away ....

Very Welsh and from a large working-class family, Granddad was a warm, gregarious, infuriating, charming, man with forthright views. His passions were rugby and classical music, and he possessed a resonant bass singing voice that he used whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was equally fervent, though not enthusiastic, about the composition and performance of the Welsh rugby team of the moment, politicians, and men with long hair (this was the 1960s).

He was outgoing and communicative almost to a fault. He would strike up conversations with complete strangers at sports events, on the train, in restaurants ... a trait my mother inherited but which, in the main, has not reached me. I still marvel at the ease with which he was able to do this.

When his three children were still young the family moved with him to London, following a work promotion, and he stayed there for thirty years before returning to South Wales in his retirement. My mother and her brothers remained in England and lost their Welsh accents. Granddad kept his.

My grandmother died during World War II and a couple of years after her death he married again, this time to a Londoner. They suited each other. She would tease him mercilessly, which was very good for him. He apparently softened around her, and mellowed.

I was his only grandchild for my first ten years, and thus the focus of much of his love and attention. As a little girl, I adored him and the feeling was mutual. As I grew older, and my head caught up with my heart, some of that bonding loosened, though it never completely vanished. I was a teenager in the 1960s and there was no way that he and I were going totally to escape our differences.

This photo recently came to light when my sister and I were going through some family papers. It is his warmth, together with his passion, decisiveness and zest that stay with me; he faced each day full-on and wrung out the last drop of experience and pleasure from everything he did. That kind of energy and enthusiasm, the relish of the essence of life, is something I seek to embrace more and more urgently as the years slip by.

I haven't really inherited these particular genes from him; self-doubt gets in the way so very easily and I still elect to hover nervously on the sidelines too much of the time.

On other days though it all falls into place, and I break through the invisible barriers and dance.