Snapshot: Goodbye to Berlin after the holiday
I am about five in this photograph, which conjures the early 50s as my parents and I stand outside the entrance to my maternal grandfather’s hallway in Berlin. We are dressed formally for our return journey to Castleford, West Yorkshire after our annual holiday: cumbersome leather suitcases, very uncasual clothing and my mother carrying my doll, Linda.
The huge front door and cobbled pavement are still there on leafy Mommsenstrasse, but the stucco has been smoothed over.
This was the end of our annual visit, where I would inevitably get up to mischief in a protest at not understanding most of the conversation around me and where I would absorb the smells and sounds of a Berlin slowly recovering from the devastation of the war. Just round the corner there was a huge heap of rubble, the remains of a ravaged apartment block.
The picture conveys only subtly the anxiety my parents must have felt before embarking on the two-day return trip by plane, train and ferry – and also the intense sadness my mother must have been going through at leaving behind her roots, her family and the highly charged atmosphere of her home city.
Margaret Davis
Playlist: Our holiday song on the disco dancefloor
Live is Life by Opus
“When we all give the power / We all give the best / Every minute of an hour / Don’t think about the rest”
It was 9pm on a scorching hot day in July 1985 – we were at a French campsite and I was halfway up a climbing frame. With my little brother and our two friends, we were enjoying the last dusky, balmy minutes before the call of “Bedtime, lads!”
From through the pine trees, the muffled sound of the campsite disco drifted our way as the crickets chirped.
Suddenly, the song changed and we heard “Life is Life (na na na na na)” … We all looked at each other. “Labadab dab dab life (na na na na na).”
We came down from our climbing frames and seesaws and, propelled by our little brown legs, sprinted off to the disco. “Liiiiiiiife (na na na na na)!”
Live is Life was the song of the holiday and tonight they had played it much later than usual. So much later, in fact, that we had given up and left the disco early in favour of the playground.
Until we heard the music begin: “… and every song everybody sings” … We’re coming, hold on!
“Life is life” … Nearly there!
“Life is Life (na na na)” … We crash through the gate to the disco!
“When we all feel the power, life is life, come on stand up and dance” … And we’re at the centre of the dancefloor with everyone else.
“Life is life!”
Thirty years on, hearing this takes me straight back to that dancefloor that night when I was 12 to a golden memory of when they played our holiday song – better late than never.
Gary Sutcliffe
We love to eat: Nanny Grimes’s stuffing
Ingredients
2 slices of bread, crumbled loosely into breadcrumbs (not fine)
1 tbsp oil
1 large onion (red or white)
Dried mixed herbs
Salt and pepper
Fry the breadcrumbs and onions in the oil and add the mixed herbs and season to taste. Fry for eight to 10 minutes until the onions are soft and the breadcrumbs start to crisp. Then transfer to an ovenproof dish. Once the pork is removed from the oven to rest before carving, put the stuffing in the oven for 15-20 minutes until nicely crisp. Then serve on top of the pork with gravy.
My maternal grandmother lived in Sussex and she liked to cook a roast every Sunday and Wednesday. They were always succulent and the roast potatoes so fluffy and tasty. What stood out for me though was her stuffing, which she made to go with pork. It is actually served separately to sit on the slices of pork with gravy on top. Great comfort food.
My nan (Nanny Grimes) ran a sweet shop in St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex until the war when the family were evacuated to Ringmer. There the family started a successful building company. They had a large house that always seemed to be full of people. My uncle and three cousins lived there, as did an old aunt.
We often spent Christmas Day there, which was a delight for me and my brother. There was a large garden with an apple orchard at the end and an enormous blackberry bush so there were lots of apple and blackberry tarts with custard.
The garden backed on to my school playground so I was able to drop by on my way home from school for a glass of pop. Nan had an old-fashioned walk-in larder and always had three large bottles of Corona lemonade, orangeade and – my favourite, back when I had a sweet tooth – cherryade.
Richard Thorpe
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