24th June 2010 and yet another funeral, the last of my father’s brothers, uncle Frank. Probably the one of my uncles I saw the most and I got the impression, rightly or wrongly, he was my dad’s favourite brother.
We have not been a close family over the years and the only time we seem to meet is when one of us has died. As usual the survivors reminisce and I pick up some of the history that we never hear anywhere else.
This week’s clasic concerned my paternal grandfather, one time farmer, mechanic for Guy motors and apparantly bankrupt independent milkman with a horse called ‘Blood’. During the war he went to work at the Castle Bromwich production line making Spitfires and was once told to locate and fix a fault on an almost complete aircraft. He proptly climbed into the cockpit and disconected a hose pipe gasing himself. When he came to the shift was over and he had to confess he had not located the fault.
My dad’s surviving sister married another Graham and he was a painter and decorator. He told me of his national service as a radio operator in the signal corps and his near attachement to the Paras. Asked how he felt about jumping he said he just closed his eyes and fell out of the plane as the alternative was a hobnail boot in the back. He never got to serve with the Paras though as he was transfered back before completing his training.
Cousin Frank had a clipping from a 1964 edition of the Express & Star showing a photograph of the old farmhouse at Madely as their ‘where in the Midlands’ photo quiz. This is the last known picture of the old farmhouse.