WDYTYA Series 4 #1 Natasha Kaplinsky

[pettsy]

I'm always surprised by the number of people I meet or read about on here who never knew their own grand-parents ... maybe I was just lucky, in that mine lived next door !   And the generation before them were often subjects of family conversations ...

Blimey That's sad 

I was lucky I knew both my lovely grandparents, and even my g grandmother, but she did die when I was very young.
I still have photo's of us together.

[PaulaToo]

Me too, Lydart.
I knew both of my grandmothers, my grandfathers having died one shortly one many years, before I was born. But we did talk a lot about certain great grandparents, though since doing the bizz on Eliza Ann, I have found the only true thing I was told by my mother was '...that Eliza Ann, she was weird.' ...Don't I know it! 

[old rowley]

Both sets of my grandparents died  between 1960 and 1963 and I can not really remember them (I was between five and eight at the time of their deaths). True, I can remember going to their homes, and visiting family members whilst there but not much of my grandparents come to mind, except of course the milky bar chocolate that one nan insisted that I liked and the fresh baked apple pie that the other nan would have on the table when we went to see her but of anything else zilch. Which is why I say that I know nothing about their early lives. My one aunt who would have been able to tell me about her family would always retort, when asked, "what do you want to know for, its no good digging up the past"  and would change the subject, sadly died in 2000 (I think that she would be suprised at what I have since found out about her parents and other family members). 

old rowley

[oursutherlands]

What really finished me off was the haunting singing of Benny Kaplinsky in the ruined synagogue - breathing life and prayer and music back into those 15th century walls after decades of silence.  Amazing.

Anna

Yeah ... it was amazing to hear the Hebrew Prayer ... has anybody know what it was called?

Would love to watch the programmme again just to hear the end piece again.

[oursutherlands]

I'm always surprised by the number of people I meet or read about on here who never knew their own grand-parents ... maybe I was just lucky, in that mine lived next door !   And the generation before them were often subjects of family conversations ...

For what itt is worth, all four of mine died before I was born. Both Grandfathers committed suicide and both grandmothers succumbed to the big C . Don't fancy my chances!

[Simon G.]

I was fortunate in many ways, since I knew three of my grandparents (only one I didn't know was my mother's father, who had a heart-attack many years before my parents met).  Never really got along with my father's parents (very few people ever did...my grandfather tended to be a little confrontational), but that's a different story entirely.
What always surprised me though is that my mother's mother never spoke of her parents.  She'd always talk about every other aspect of her past, and always tell us about her one sister (who none of the other sisters were talking too...never told me why though)...but her parents, and especially her father, were never a subject she seemed prepared to discuss.  It's such a shame, 'cause of all the people in the family she would have been the one who could have told such wonderful stories that would have broken down so many brickwalls.

[pettsy]

I knew them all so well, but still wished I had asked more questions.

Like which part of Ireland did my grandad's granny's family come from?
Ask both grandad's about the war.


My mum's parents died when I was in my late teens, and dad's parents when I was 26, two months apart 

Mum's dad made the best chips, Spam and Chips, I remember it well.

I have my grandparents letter they send during WW2, the love and passion they had, it's beautiful.