International Women's Day

In honour of IWD 2024 I am posting this photo of my maternal grandmother. Her name was Alice Elmore (Nee Brown) and I would say that she was the strongest female influence in my life as I was growing up. For the first two years of my life she was pretty much my primary carer.

Although she had somehow managed to attend school for only one day of her life before deciding it was not for her, and never learnt to read and write she was a very interesting woman. Her family had been travellers with the fair and she knew so much about nature and living off the land. As I grew up she took me for walks, telling me about plants and animals we would see. She kept chickens, pigs, geese and had grown up around horses and dogs too. 

She'd had an apparently turbulent marriage to a man several years her junior - my Granddad, though he died before I was born. I never heard a bad word about him from her, though I heard plenty from my Mum. I do know that after his death they lost their home and had to revert to living in caravans. She did not marry again, preferring to be as independent as she could.


She could be quite outspoken and if anyone thought they could get the better of her or take advantage due to her lack of education they soon realised their mistake. 

That said, she was popular around the village with many people calling for a chat, tea and a taste of whatever was cooking or that she had baked, or to bring produce for her that they had grown. She had a small shed alongside the caravan fitted with a little gas stove, and there was almost always something cooking. 

Despite her lack of education she could tell a story better than anyone, and I was a captive audience - not that I minded! She'd regale me with folk tales, stories from her childhood, the fairgrounds and random adventures that she would make up as she went along. My Dad told me that some of the tales she told me had grown-up versions too - unfortunately I never got to hear more than snippets of those, though many of the edited versions were pretty spooky!

After my parents and I moved into a house in the next village she'd come to babysit me and bring chestnuts to roast or pikelets to toast and regale me with her tales.

She continued to live in the caravan until she got gangrene in her foot after stubbing her toe and had to have her leg amputated. She went into a care home, which she didn't mind until she needed to have her other leg amputated also and could no longer be as involved with things as she had previously. Shortly after this she died of a stroke, when I was thirteen.

Today I woke up with a migraine and lost the best part of the morning to it. Before I knew where I was it was gone 1PM and I had done very little other than finish watching the second series of Vera. 

Just as well I don't have work today - Claire is not opening the van as she has been invited for a day out at Crufts.