What could be nicer..........

than a boily egg? When John goes to lunch club he often brings home half a dozen eggs that have been laid by Margaret's daughter's chickens and we have taken to having them boiled, bringing back many happy memories of childhood and our early days of parenthood. Today was no exception!

We reminisced about John's parents, and how on a Thursday afternoon, after school, our boys used to love going to see Nanny Iles, as she made the best boily eggs (their words then and we still use them now) - they were just right, with a runny yolk, just set white and of course, soldiers. If daddy hadn't come in from work by the time the boys had finished their eggs, they had to turn them upside down in their egg cups and then he had to "bash in" the top of each egg and feign surprise that there was nothing in there!! In those days, though, we only had one egg each!

We also had thinly cut bread and "real" butter, orange Club biscuits and there was always Battenburg cake and her wonderful fruit cake. Those were the days when tea was laid out in the front room with the best china.

What memories those boily eggs evoked of a wonderful grandmother, who was always there and loved to feed her family - she gave them not only good food but lots of love too. It was she who taught them to sew buttons onto a piece of material, to poke a bonfire and to pick apples off the tree and place them carefully in a basket.

Nanny died 16 years ago, and we still miss her so much - and also John's father, who had died 20 years earlier, when the boys were 5 and 3 years old. They were loving and caring parents and grandparents, honest, hard-working and always there to help, but never forcing their opinions on us - they never went to university, in fact, they probably both left school at 14 years old to go to work, but they were so wise - and we learned a lot from them.

It's very true that to live in the hearts of those we love is never to die.

Who would have thought that a boily egg could remind us of so much?