(no subject)
We have just returned from a few days in Liverpool. We took Davis's father up to see his elder brother(93) who has been put in a nursing home and is not expected to live long. I don't think he had a clue who we were, and doesn't even really know his own daughters now which is v. sad. His girlfriend Dolly (93 next week) on the other hand is amazing, she is really agile, she kept zooming off to get things, moved very quickly indeed and mentally is extremely sharp, she is very distressed that Vic had to go into the home and explained that she was simply unable to lift him any more! She goes by bus every day to see him - I hope I am like that at 93 - if I get that far! We came back through Leeds and visited an old army friend of Davis's father who has just had a heart operation, it all made Davis's father (86) look positively fit and healthy in comparison. We took him to visit Armley where he grew up, first in a tiny Victorian terraced back to back house with communal toilets about 100 yards up the road (the remains of which are still there), and secondly in an end terrace house about twice the size a few streets away where he lived a few doors away from the young Alan Bennett (Halliday Place), and also to see his old Grammar School which is now split into flats. I think the girls were quite shocked to hear about and see the conditions their Granded suffered as a child, the film Angela's Ashes sprung to mind on seeing his first house although they seemed to have had a happy childhood and were never so poor that they could not eat. The rougher parts of Liverpool were quite an eyeopener for them too, with so much evidence of valdalism, arson attacks, etc. I hope it has made them realise how lucky they are and that there are so many people worse off than them - in this country today.