For some reason I've been feeling rather nostalgic of late. I feel very lucky to have had a happy and carefree childhood and have lots of vivid memories, some of which are triggered by a particular piece of music or a smell or perhaps an object. When I saw these glasses in the Pedlars catalogue I was suddenly swept back 35 years to my Gangan's kitchen, because the exact same ones always sat in a little stack on a shelf in her glassware cupboard.
When I was growing up my family would always visit with my grandparents on a saturday morning. My Gangan would brew coffee and the grown-ups would talk in the kitchen while my brother and I watched saturday morning tv in the living room – Tarzan and the Osmonds featured heavily in the early '70s and then later it was swap shop or Tiswas. There was always elevensies – either my Gangan's special concoction of drinking chocolate, dessicated coconut and the cream from the top of the milk mixed into a delicious goo or maybe some cake or cookies. To drink it was either a glass of robinson's lemon barley or some PLJ in a glass exactly the same as these.
I love that every time I drink from these glasses I have a little blast from the past and despite the fact that both my grandparents are no longer with us, they feel close again. Funny how inanimate objects can conjure up such intense feelings.
Is there anything that makes you feel nostalgic about your childhood?
little cotton rabbits 
Wow Julie. My Gran and Gogga had the exact same glasses. That’s why I bought some a year or two ago from the Toast catalogue. I used to have lemonade in mine in the early eighties. Reading this post has made the hairs on my neck stand on end!
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That’s so sweet!
Wooden bridge has reminded me, it had lead me the way to school and brought me home when I was a little girl:)
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Ribena and the crust of a new loaf – my grandmother (who was otherwise not very grandmotherly with any of us) always bought me Ribena which my siblings and cousins loathed and cut me the crust (which she called a topper) off the new loaf – holding the loaf to her chest and cutting towards herself which made me squirm lest she cut herself!
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I loved your post. Here in Connecticut USA I always knew something yummy was going to happen whenever my Mama used her beautiful green Jadeware bowls. She had a set of three that all fit inside one another. She served her famous beef stew in them and also her wonderful tapioca pudding. Yum. As an adult whenever I was ill she would bring me one or the other. Better than antibiotics! I miss my Mom. I spent hours on Ebay trying to find those Jadeware bowls…now I have four of them. Every time I use them I feel her love…..
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What a lovely story. I can never recollect things like that when I try to summon a memory, but the oddest things assault me out of the blue from time to time and I love it when that happens.
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I inherited my grandmother’s tea caddy spoon (it’s I think brass, with a cat playing a fiddle on the handle) and it’s in our sugar canister. Every time I make my husband a cup of tea (he takes sugar, I don’t) I see it and think of her.
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absolutely.. when ever i smell freshly brewed coffee . it takes me back to saturday mornings in town with my mum we use to pass a shop where you brought coffee beans and even then when i didnt drink coffee i loved it and now every cup reminds me of happy days . love your blog . love to here about toby and amy and your goings on and thankyou for reminders of memories so precious ..
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My Gran passed away last year and we miss her very much. You are absolutely right, it’s the inanimate objects that bring back the best memories, her thimble, china rolling pin, weighing scales… It wasn’t her jewellery or china that I wanted to inherit on her passing, but those objects which, to me, were invaluable.
Becky x
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As I read I imagined my grandparents front room. PLJ, now that takes me back. Did you ever watch Banana splits? I loved them with the arbian nights cartoon. Happy days.
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Ah. Yes. My grandmother’s house was an enchanted cottage. Quaint. Every room just the way it had been as my father grew up. She had a glass table in the tiny breakfast room; the legs were white iron work and turned into vines at the top that spread and curled, supporting the glass top. She didn’t have many things, but the things she had were good. The tiny glass desert bowls – she’d take out the ice cream and cut it into smallish cubes, then dribble hot fudge on them. Those bowls – I don’t want to overuse the word magic. But the house was magic. The Persian rugs. The globe of glass at the bottom of the stair that always had a cutting of ivy growing in it.
The house is still there, but the things long gone. I used to dream about it, and could fill pages with things that, when I think of them, fill me with that same thing you are feeling. I have many of those things in my house now, and they have almost lost that magic, because I have worked them into our lives. And I have taken great care to populate my house with magic things, so that the children and the grandchildren will feel that deep connection you are feeling. Gathering pine cones in the old, creaking red wagon. The squeaking complaint of of the screen door on the porch.
It’s my grandmother’s house I thought of right away. I knew it and it stayed the same all through my childhood – while our own household travelled the length of the US with my father’s work. So there was no house I look back at as THE house for our little family, but a string of nice houses, one we actually built to order. I have been back to visit all but the one in NY. Each had its charms. But the magic was in Kansas City, long past the time when my grandmother had passed away.
Still, though – my mother was something like her (only a tiny bit – she was my father’s mother and not really all that convivial) in that mother did not have many things. But the things she gathered were the furniture of my childhood, regardless of the house that held them. Since my mother has gone down under dementia, some of those things have come to me, also.
But even as I write all this, I realize that THIS house is the one I will someday ache for. And the smells from this kitchen. And the sound of leaves in the summer wind at night. And as I go through the pictures of the children, now flown – and as I handle the things of theirs that I will NEVER part with, I realize I have made my own nostalgia. And sometimes it is very sharp and quick.
But these feelings are great blessings. And tell us that we have been loved. And we have been safe. If only for a little while in a little space. Children, circled by magic.
Thank you for making me think of this.
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hmmm. I meant “dessert” bowls. Sigh.
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For me it’s the scent of wallflowers. My Father grew loads of them. When I smell them I’m seven again and helping him in our garden. (I’m now 64!)
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Hello,
Lovely to read about your childhood memories with the glasses and the PLJ!
My trigger for vivid memories of my Gran’s house, is the heady scent of Hyacinths in bloom, especially the blue ones, and I am instantly transported back to her sitting room and the bowls of lovely bulbs. Another memory, also associated with Gran is running my fingers through my buttons box…the sound and the colours…just like hers.
I do love reading your blogs and of course the superb photos x
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Oh isn’t it funny how it’s the littlest things that you remember from grandparents houses. Often I can’t picture the living room or outside of a house but can see the tiny detail, just like these glasses. (they remind me of school lunch halls too)
Luv Kat c
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nice story…these are our everyday glasses. hope my grankids feel that way some day.
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Almonds. My grandparents had two huge almond trees in their back yard and my Papa would climb up and throw them down for me to collect.
The taste has never left me.
And my grandmother reciting “Fee Fi Fo Fum”
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The smell of fresh mint takes me back (a long way!) to my childhood and standing on a stool to chop the mint leaves for our Sunday roast lamb. I think this was the beginning of my love of cooking – and my love of mint sauce – both of which I still have.
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my mother has got the same glasses… in dolls size. she always says that she’ll give them to me when i’ll be older!!! they were samplers of a french factory, i think.
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What takes me back to childhood is the ancient green biscuit tin that used to hold the cakes for tea – when my parents died, I made sure to commandeer this as well as my mum’s baking tins so that every time I use them I am transported back to being a child. The smell that takes me back to my grandparents’ house is a mixture of pipe tobacco and lavendar – we went to a farm shop a few years ago and there was that smell and suddenly I was four years old again. My brother was with me and recognised it too.
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My Maw Maw was full blooded italian, first generation here. She would make gumbo when i would visit, and the smell of making the Rue was horrible! Nothing worse than the smell of burnt flour…fast forward 30 years and i think it is the best smell on the planet.
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Love the elderflowe cordial…looks like a scene from an Enid Blyton Famous Five book – lashings of ginger ale and all that! Lots of things that remind me of my childhood, mostly smells for me, lavender for my Granny and my Grandad’s baking – he made great biscuits and scones!
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Funny you should mention nostalgia and show those little cupcakes in your photos. When I was a child, my mother would buy cupcakes shaped like those, scalloped edges and a big bump on the top. It consisted of some sort of dense, delicious vanilla cake, with chocolate glaze on top covering that bump. Haven’t seen any that looked exactly like the ones in your photo in fifty years! Wish I had one now. Thanks for the memory. Tina
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The mountains, old barns, farm animals out and about feeding, the neighbor across the street bringing me fresh eggs from her chickens, porch swings, lilacs–I had a huge lilac bush outside my bedroom window, the smell was unforgettable and I am transported back when ever I smell them, the smell of homemade bread fresh from the oven, fresh produce brought in from the garden……..
I had such a wonderful life growing up. I hope my children will someday say the same for theirs………
Red fingernail polish. My grandmother wore bright red polish. 🙂 And anklets, which is why I wear mine……..
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I grew up in an old farmhouse, heated by woodstove. Whenever fall comes and I smell the smoke from chimneys, I think of walking home from school with my sister, and the two of us starting a fire in the stove when we got home.
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Dial soap. Apparently my grandmother had this at her house, because every time I smell it, I think of those magical visits to her and my grandfather’s farm in New Brunswick, Canada, when I was a child.
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oh my! Those look very much like the glasses my grandparents had when I was growing up (mid-70s -80s in the USA)… I mostly remember drinking orange juice out of them. I had to pass by their house after school and if my grandfather was out in the yard I’d stop to visit and we’d have a coca cola and a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme pie cookie. It’s still one of my favorite snacks to have.
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So many…
– very well ironed bed sheets make me think of my grand mother 🙂
– frozen fried fish sticks make me think of the food my mom made us (i stopped eating those ! so they are special to me) and also canned tomato sauce.
– the smell of lasagna on a sunday late morning
– magnolia make me think of my teenage bedroom (i had a view on the magnolia from there)
…
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That was a lovely post.
I find that the smell of lilac trees always makes me think of my childhood as my brother and I would spend most of the summer playing in an archway made by lilacs in our garden.
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Believe it or not…today I bought – at a book fair – the “I-Spy Secret Codes” book originally part of the introductory “I Spy” membership envelope… way back when….because it reminded me of the excitement of opening one of two little top drawers in the dressing table in the room where my sister and I used to sleep when we stayed at Grannies House! Granny always seemed to manage to find brilliant new things for the two drawers…a little bell shaped like a trophy (I have that still!)… knitted rabbits with lettuces in their paws (!!) (the pattern is now mine and much used)…Enid Blyton magazines (which we didn’t have at home), lots of notebooks and pencils and craft things. Puzzles. Funny socks. I feel so privileged to have these happy memories of my childhood!
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Lovely post.
Blue gingham ‘house-coats’ remind me of my wonderful Nana, she always wore them to do the housework (which meant she was almost always wearing one!). When she died my Mum and I found her stock of them and discussed whether we should take one each and wear it from time to time whilst cleaning in homage to her. We didn’t, I sometimes wish we did.
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The smell that takes me straight back to childhood is hot vinegar. How strange I hear you say but I used to come home from school to the house full of this smell because my Nanna had come over to make green tomato chutney with my Mum. Whenever I make chutney now I am suddenly 10 years old again.
My Nanna also had some of those glasses but we went over to see her on Saturday afternoon and we watched the Generation Game together.
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My Grandfather’s grandfather clock which is on my landing at home. Whenever I used to go and visit my grandparents he would measure my height against it to see how much I had grown and would make a chalk mark on the inside – they are all still there though a little smudged now. It’s rythmic tocking takes me back but I have to swing the pendulum myself as the mechanism has been broken for years. Great blog subject – I love reading other people’s memories and often it is something obscure and so simple that conjures up happy childhood times.
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I so recognize what you are saying.
And I have those glasses at home as well!
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What a lovely post Julie. For me, it is a set of Pyrex mixing bowls featuring a country design with cockerals, people and wheat sheaves. I don’t know the name of the design, but I think it is from the 1960s. My Mum owned a set in blue with a white design and I came across a set in white with a blue design, which I bought. Every time I use them, it reminds me of helping my Mum with baking cakes in her kitchen.
Marie x
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Hello,
I know this is off topic for your writing but I was reading about Toby and wanted to say I understand your struggles. When my son, who has some of your son’s challenges, was little we had the same problem with sleeping through the night. My mom gave me a CD and I just happened to be listening to it when my son went to sleep. He slept the best sleep he had ever slept. I continued to use the cd as “background” and I am really convinced it made a difference. The cd was Steven Halpern’s “Comfort Zone” What I am saying is it couldn’t hurt to try it and if it helps they you are really lucky. I remember the sigh of relief when it worked for my son.
God Bless you and good luck.
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This is so lovely! I had a blast from the past the other day when I had a hot ribena – my Nan used to make me hot ribenas in a plastic mug when I was little. We would get up at about 6am and Nan would take us downstairs so as not to wake Mum and Dad and get us a hot ribena to watch the cartoons with 🙂 I love nostalgia 🙂
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My Nan lived with us so I never had the visiting experience but I did have a Nan that was as close as a mother. But as to nostalgia, music does it for me. The 20th Century Fox fanfare is Star Wars and always disappoints when it’s followed by a different song. And Long Haired Lover from Liverpool… I remember the big badges that were so popular at the time. I had cringe Jimmy Osmond on mine!
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