A bombshell

I have awful memories of my dad's mother. She was cold. She was disinterested in me. I could never live up to her favourite grandchildren, my cousins. And it was always rubbed in. She was a funny old sod and very Victorian in her outlook, although Queen Victoria had died a long time before my Nan was born.

I've been back at the family history, and have found an index to a census that was taken on the eve of war in 1939. She is listed under her second husband's surname, with my own surname in brackets after it. So it appears that she and my grandad had separated a year after my dad was born. I don't think my grandad's family knew anything about it. Grandad was killed in 1943 and I know my nan was in contact with his father until he died. So she didn't shack up with her second husband after my grandad died. She was already living with him before the war. What a trollop.

I wish I'd known before what I know now. I could almost have respected her, if it weren't for the fact that she was so ashamed of me when I 'came out' as a teenager. I would have laughed in her face. It sounds like she was a bit of a slut. In my experience people who give out Victorian mentality usually do have things to hide.