..all i have is this picture and the words in my heart.

I didn't really know my Nanny Cartwright, (my Great Grandmother) that well, she died when I was thirteen and the last four or five years of her life were spent in a rather rapid spiral into dementia and illness which necessitated her spending a lot of time in hospital.
I know her from stories my Mum and my Nan used to tell me, and from the few fleeting memories, I have of my own.

Every second Sunday we used to go visit Nanny Cartwright, I remember enough to know that I did not REALLY want to go, but my Mum was big on family duties, and that was a duty she did religiously. Nanny lived in a set of units just back from the railway tracks in Chigwell.

The only thing that made visiting Nanny that often bearable for the seven years old me, was Uncle Ronny. Ronny was Nanny’s youngest brother, he'd been in THE WAR (a fact that always seemed to be capitalised whenever it was spoken of) and it seemed that THE WAR had irreparably damaged Uncle Ronny in some way that no one was quite able to put a finger on.

Before THE WAR Ronny was a linesman on the railways, I have no idea what that was, but that’s what he used to say, after THE WAR Uncle Ronny was in and out of the Repatriation Hospital, he took to drinking excessively and couldn't hold down a job.

So Uncle Ronny came to live with his sister, she used to nag at him to stop drinking, get a job, pull himself together, and he'd say 'yes m'darlin, you're right, I'm a terrible brother, no wonder you're ashamed of me' and she'd stop nagging, tell him that she loved him no matter what, and he'd wink at us, and we'd know that he was playing her like an instrument.

On the Sundays that he was there, Uncle Ronny would take my sister and me outside, down to the train tracks and we would stand there for hours, waiting for the trains. Uncle Ronny always knew when the next train was, what sort of train it was, and most times he even knew the drivers, they would always toot the horn and wave at Ronny.

That seemed to please Ronny, I am sure he missed working on the railways, and it thrilled us. We always felt rather important, standing there having the horn go and the driver wave, and then we would wave at everyone in the carriages as they would go by, and most people would wave back.

Then Uncle Ronny would look at us conspiratorially and say 'I need to see a man about a dog' and then he'd hand us fifty cents each, take us to the shop just across the road and say 'wait for me here' and then he'd disappear for thirty or so minutes, it wasn't until I was much older that I realised that 'the man about a dog' was really 'ducking off to the pub for a quick bevvy or three without Irene (Nanny) knowing'. Because he was supposed to be watching out for us, not nicking off to the Claremont Hotel for a quickie.

Uncle Ronny drank like a trooper, swore like a sailor and smoked like a chimney, three habits all designed to get well and truly up the nose of my teetotal Great Grandmother, but she tolerated them, because Ronny was a gentleman, he was kind, thoughtful, and he loved her dearly.

He always seemed very sad to me, and I wondered many times why he had never gotten married, and it wasn't until a long time after both he and Nanny were dead that Nan told me that he'd had a fiancée when he went off to THE WAR. But when he had been captured, imprisoned, and put to work on the infamous and deadly Burma railway, she had decided that he was not going to be coming back, and she married someone else.

Ronny returned a mere shell of himself from that horrendous place, with the one thing he'd always kept holding onto the thought that the woman he loved would be there for him, and she wasn't. So he started drinking heavily.

He used to wake in the middle of the night screaming in pain from some relived injury inflicted on him in that place, nowadays they call it PTSD, back then it was called 'get over it and move on'.

I think Nanny kept him saner than he would have been, she was totally devastated when he developed lung cancer and died a long and painful lingering death. That was when she started to go downhill.

She used to have conversations with him after he died, no one could sit in his chair, she loved him more than she ever let on, and it was probably a blessing that when the illness finally took hold it robbed her of all memories of who he was, who we all were.

When she died and they laid her out in her coffin, Nan made sure that there was a picture of Ronny with her along with his army medals; it comforted my Nan to know that Ronny and Irene would be together again.

I wasn't allowed to go to Uncle Ronny’s funeral, Mum said I wasn't old enough, but at Nanny’s I slipped a fifty cent piece into the coffin and asked Nanny to pass on a thank you for all the 'going to see a man about a dogs' and the trains.

..all i have is this picture and the words in my heart.

I didn't really know my Nanny Cartwright, (my Great Grandmother) that well, she died when I was thirteen and the last four or five years of her life were spent in a rather rapid spiral into dementia and illness which necessitated her spending a lot of time in hospital.
I know her from stories my Mum and my Nan used to tell me, and from the few fleeting memories, I have of my own.

Every second Sunday we used to go visit Nanny Cartwright, I remember enough to know that I did not REALLY want to go, but my Mum was big on family duties, and that was a duty she did religiously. Nanny lived in a set of units just back from the railway tracks in Chigwell.

The only thing that made visiting Nanny that often bearable for the seven years old me, was Uncle Ronny. Ronny was Nanny’s youngest brother, he'd been in THE WAR (a fact that always seemed to be capitalised whenever it was spoken of) and it seemed that THE WAR had irreparably damaged Uncle Ronny in some way that no one was quite able to put a finger on.

Before THE WAR Ronny was a linesman on the railways, I have no idea what that was, but that’s what he used to say, after THE WAR Uncle Ronny was in and out of the Repatriation Hospital, he took to drinking excessively and couldn't hold down a job.

So Uncle Ronny came to live with his sister, she used to nag at him to stop drinking, get a job, pull himself together, and he'd say 'yes m'darlin, you're right, I'm a terrible brother, no wonder you're ashamed of me' and she'd stop nagging, tell him that she loved him no matter what, and he'd wink at us, and we'd know that he was playing her like an instrument.

On the Sundays that he was there, Uncle Ronny would take my sister and me outside, down to the train tracks and we would stand there for hours, waiting for the trains. Uncle Ronny always knew when the next train was, what sort of train it was, and most times he even knew the drivers, they would always toot the horn and wave at Ronny.

That seemed to please Ronny, I am sure he missed working on the railways, and it thrilled us. We always felt rather important, standing there having the horn go and the driver wave, and then we would wave at everyone in the carriages as they would go by, and most people would wave back.

Then Uncle Ronny would look at us conspiratorially and say 'I need to see a man about a dog' and then he'd hand us fifty cents each, take us to the shop just across the road and say 'wait for me here' and then he'd disappear for thirty or so minutes, it wasn't until I was much older that I realised that 'the man about a dog' was really 'ducking off to the pub for a quick bevvy or three without Irene (Nanny) knowing'. Because he was supposed to be watching out for us, not nicking off to the Claremont Hotel for a quickie.

Uncle Ronny drank like a trooper, swore like a sailor and smoked like a chimney, three habits all designed to get well and truly up the nose of my teetotal Great Grandmother, but she tolerated them, because Ronny was a gentleman, he was kind, thoughtful, and he loved her dearly.

He always seemed very sad to me, and I wondered many times why he had never gotten married, and it wasn't until a long time after both he and Nanny were dead that Nan told me that he'd had a fiancée when he went off to THE WAR. But when he had been captured, imprisoned, and put to work on the infamous and deadly Burma railway, she had decided that he was not going to be coming back, and she married someone else.

Ronny returned a mere shell of himself from that horrendous place, with the one thing he'd always kept holding onto the thought that the woman he loved would be there for him, and she wasn't. So he started drinking heavily.

He used to wake in the middle of the night screaming in pain from some relived injury inflicted on him in that place, nowadays they call it PTSD, back then it was called 'get over it and move on'.

I think Nanny kept him saner than he would have been, she was totally devastated when he developed lung cancer and died a long and painful lingering death. That was when she started to go downhill.

She used to have conversations with him after he died, no one could sit in his chair, she loved him more than she ever let on, and it was probably a blessing that when the illness finally took hold it robbed her of all memories of who he was, who we all were.

When she died and they laid her out in her coffin, Nan made sure that there was a picture of Ronny with her along with his army medals; it comforted my Nan to know that Ronny and Irene would be together again.

I wasn't allowed to go to Uncle Ronny’s funeral, Mum said I wasn't old enough, but at Nanny’s I slipped a fifty cent piece into the coffin and asked Nanny to pass on a thank you for all the 'going to see a man about a dogs' and the trains.

brain bleach.. now

For you auralpainkiller Legolas, by Laura

so so so BAD

brain bleach.. now

For you auralpainkiller Legolas, by Laura

so so so BAD