27 December 1971 Oma Adele

Posting on 31st December 2015

Forgive the cheating as this was taken the day before but I don't have a photo for this day and I felt Granny (German - Oma) deserved her own Blip.

From the age of 8 until about 12, I was regularly farmed out to Oma for Christmas or Easter holidays as I could only go home to Trinidad once a year for the summer holidays. Usually every other year my parents had leave and were in Europe for one of the holidays most of which we again spent at Omas.

Usual procedure, I flew from London to Frankfurt, Uncle George picked me up and drove me the hour to Omas near Heidelberg where my other Uncle Jochen also lived. Jochen, still a student at Heidelberg, was charged with keeping me out of trouble and poor man had to schlep me around his drinking haunts and on skiing holidays where he had to explain away the brat to all the prospective young ladies in the apres ski bars.

Oma, as with all Granny worldwide, will probably be best remembered for her cooking! She was however the family matriarch and kept the famiy together. She went through an awful lot of misery in her life, losing her first husband to cancer in the 30's and then her second husband on the Russian front during WWII. She was a very proud "Westfalle" the area around Dortmund. Her first husband a Bavarian. No records exist to show if they argued over football.

She suffered very badly when she had to bury her only daughter, my mother Antoinette - an awful event for any parent.