Grandma Ada and Grandad Fred

.... probably somewhere on holiday, supping a pint. He was a miner and she was a housewife with a big personality. As one of a family of 13, personality was probably a survival mechanism. I used to go for long walks with Grandad and his dog, often just sitting silently watching an animal, or the flow of the stream up on the Fell at Waldridge. Grandma knitted all of our family sweaters etc, baked delicious cakes and put on Geordie "sketches" with several of her siblings. They were really well known in Chester-le-Street as they ran the swimming club in the river Wear and saved several lives both directly, and indirectly. Grandma once had a visitor after the World War II was over, from a young man who had swum out to a boat on D day. He told her that he could hear her voice encouraging him to keep going. The were real characters, my paternal grandparents, so loving and generous with the little they had, and a comedy act together. What a loss for our family, when they died, but what loving memories we 5 grandchildren have.