Aunties

I was thinking the other day about my aunties.

And thinking back to when I was growing up I now realise what a big part my aunties played in my life.

I had three aunties but if I'm really correct only two of them were actual aunties,the other was my grandmas sister so that would make her,er I'm not sure to be honest,to me she was
 always Aunty Polly.

Aunty Polly lived on my grandmas street and that is where I spent most of my time. Her house was on the opposite side of the road and a few houses down from my grandmas house.

I can picture the front door,it was a terrace row of houses,but this morning what I'm trying to picture most is the back to the house and slowly these memories are floating back into my mind. To get to the back you had to walk down a little gennel,is that what they are called?Gennel seems a funny old word to be honest but even as I think it,in my mind its beginning to sound right,gennel. All the houses were linked by gennels and I guess that's the way you would get to a middle terraced house. When you walked through the gennel you would eventually come to a courtyard,quite a big square concrete yard and that was a communal space for my Auntie Polly and her neighbour to use. I'm not sure if they also had a private garden anywhere or not. I'm not sure where they hung their washing and to me this is major,I always like to know what people did with their washing...I often think I must have been a washer woman in a previous life because my thoughts often are consumed by laundry...that or a wet nurse because I think I could feed any baby but let's steer away from that subject.

As I'm casting my mind back things are slowly drifting into my head and memories are coming back to me.

Isn't that weird! Five minutes ago I could only picture Aunty Pollys front door but now I can picture the courtyard,the back door,the kitchen,the room she lived in and her front room. And I'm wondering if this is because I always used this entrance,down the gennel and through her kitchen door. I didn't often use the front door at all,even though that door was the only thing I remembered when I started writing this.

I can picture it all now! The whole layout to the house. And that has made me smile,a nice memory to have remembered.

And I have wandered miles away from what I was going to write about!

I was going to talk about the impact these three ladies had on my life although at the time I was very unaware of it. And I was going to discuss family dynamics and how family structures have changed so much,even in my lifetime.

I'll save that for another time though,a little boy has wandered down stairs and will soon be yelling out 'breakfast please Mummy' and actually I could do with a cuppa and a biscuit myself.

Linking this up to my Add A Memory

Afternote I have spoke to my mum about my recollections and she says that all the houses in the street had the square yard that I remembered but some houses eventually put a brick wall up in the middle of the yard to give each house it's own separate yard and that is why my grandmas yard looked different to my Aunty Pollys.

She also said Aunty Polly did have a little garden at the back of the yard and apparently she used to cut me flowers out of there to take to my teacher. Quite a nice new little memory for me to keep.