My Nan’s Old Desk.

For as far back as I can remember this was my nan’s beautiful desk.

 

When I was a child we lived next door to each other in a house handed down through generations.

 

 

In this photo of that house in Kent, the child is my nan, Marjorie, (born 1922) and the lady behind her is her mother, my great-grandmother, Grace.

 

 

 

 

Nan – early 1940’s.

Years later when my brother and I came along, my nan and granddad moved in to the semi-detached house next door and our new little family moved in with Grace. Something you don’t hear of much nowadays.

A hobbit sized door was knocked through in the back-to-back cupboards under the stairs, allowing us the freedom to go between the two houses whenever we liked.

Sadly this idyllic childhood came to end a decade later when my parents divorced and we moved away.

More years flew by and we all changed homes but still saw each other often. In 2003 my own daughter was born.

When my nan died in 2011 I was devastated. She’d always been such a huge part of my life and suddenly she was gone. Heart broken didn’t cover it.

We then had the soul destroying task of selling her bungalow and all its furnishings as Granddad had already left us years earlier. We sold many things but I simply couldn’t imagine parting with her beloved desk so I brought it back, contents and all, to my own house and tucked it away in the garage.

Recent  changes made me suggest we change our now hardly used third bedroom into an office. My husband loved the idea. We just needed a desk to go in it. But hey, we had one just waiting outside, right?

So, we brought Nan’s lovely old desk into the house. Unfortunately all the drawers had swollen with damp and were stuck shut.  It took a week of drying out but eventually one budged and then all the rest came free, too.

Amongst the usual desk paraphernalia we also found some other, very interesting things. Unfortunately now, though, we have no-one to ask about their history.

It’s nice to know there were some good times through the bad ones.

This week we cleaned and polished and moved Nan’s old desk into its new home, in ours. I think it looks right at home and I’m sure my lovely nan would agree.