Snapshot: My ancestors of the ‘lost generation’
A simple wedding party in West Ham, London’s East End, in 1923. To me, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather are easily identifiable, though they are not the bride and groom – they weren’t even married when the photo was taken.
The wedding was that of my great-grandfather’s sister, Beatrice Munro, and William Ponder, a soldier who had survived all four years on the frontline of the first world war.
My great-grandmother, Gertrude Cossey (left end of the front row), was a bridesmaid. Two year later, in 1925 she would marry the bride’s brother, David Munro (middle row, fourth from right).
After the photographer’s flashbulb ignited and the picture was taken, the bride, groom and their guests were free to enjoy the day’s revelry – which I have no doubt ended in an old fashioned “knees-up”.
This was a single moment captured on film before they left to celebrate, wonder and plan all the things yet to come in life. It’s something I’ve done myself at the weddings of family and friends – and particularly at my own wedding this year.
I’m struck, looking at this wedding party across the gulf of time, that I have the privilege of knowing all the joys and sorrows that lay ahead for Gertrude, David, Beatrice and William in the decades that followed this snapshot.
David died at the outbreak of the second world war, and Beatrice just after it ended. In 1950 my great-grandmother was married again – to the groom in this picture. Gertrude and William (known affectionately by my grandmother as Uncle Willie, and by my mother as a kind, gentle grandfather called Farbie) remained great companions until William died in 1968.
Not long afterwards, Gertrude received a third marriage proposal from Daniel Munro, brother to David and Beatrice (back row, third from right), which she, well into her 70s, politely declined.
I love this picture partly because it captures young survivors of the “lost generation” far enough away from the horrors of their first war to enjoy all that life had to offer, before the strife and struggles of the second world war arrived.
Yet more than that, I’m drawn to the picture because this group of intertwined ancestors reminds me that we all sit, even on our most momentous days with heads full of plans, unknowing the great twists and turns that the world, and our own lives, will take in the years ahead.
Lucy Williams
Playlist: A surreal sound on the beach when I was two
Trailing Around in a Trailer by George Formby
“I love the fresh air, it’s great I declare, wide open spaces for me / With trailer and car I set out afar, a rover I meant to be / Over the hills and dales / Over the slugs and snails”
It was one of those golden, still days of early summer. We had a caravan parked on the beach at Great Yarmouth – which you could do in 1933 before there were restrictions.
I was two, my sister Anne not yet born. How do I remember all this? I am famous in my family for my good memory and can recall scenes, tastes and smells from even before I was two. Mother and Dad were foraging for winkles on the rocks and eating them with pins. Higher up, among the sand dunes, where little tussock grasses grew, they picked flowers – thrift, as I know them to be now, so it must have been May or June when they flower.
Later that day, Dad was playing a record on his portable gramophone. It was George Formby singing, “Trailing around in my trailer I’m a champion. Camping out …”
George Formby’s voice echoing across the sands – rather surreal!
Kate Meynell
We love to eat: Chocolade Hagelslag on bread
Ingredients
One thick slice of fresh white bread
Salted butter
Chocolade Hagelslag
One glass of chilled, full-fat milk
Thickly spread the butter, and cover every inch of the bread with Chocolade Hagelslag.
The annual holiday always started with an argument. Who was going to travel in the boot of my father’s estate car with the luggage? I have three older sisters, and so I usually lost.
It was a long journey from Stoke on Trent to Dover, and I always ached when released from my Vauxhall Cavalier estate prison. The discomfort was exacerbated by the huge volumes of luggage my older sisters insisted was necessary for a month in Holland during the school summer holidays. As a family we made the annual pilgrimage to visit our Oma (grandmother), who lived in a small village near Leiden.
Once we had arrived and all six of us had squeezed into her tiny home, it was time to eat. My grandmother pretty much lived on bread, butter, potatoes and cheese, but my mother ensured that we ate well.
A number of Dutch delicacies were unobtainable in the UK in the 1970s. Mouth-watering, giant horse-shoe-shaped smoked sausage; the best thin-cut crunchy chips, served not with ketchup but far more exotic mayonnaise. Huge ice-creams loaded with whipped cream and available in an array of unusual flavours; double treacle waffle biscuits lightly spiced and containing a thin layer of sticky toffee; fresh gateaux that were incredibly light despite being encased in yet more fluffy cream and flaked almonds. And my beloved vla, a thick vanilla custard.
But there was only one real focus for me, the ultimate in breakfast bread and toast topping: Chocolade Hagelslag. I now have my own family, and I’ve taken them to Holland (I hasten to add with nobody in the boot). I’m glad to say that the food is just as good as I remember. Best of all, they still sell Chocolade Hagelslag at the supermarket and we always bring some home.
Alexander Slight
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