Who the hell do you think you are?

My elderly parents particularly on my father’s side have spent a substantial part of his life ‘clearing out’ his paternal loft and last Sunday handed me a cardboard box that had once held a gross of ‘Privet’s Sternest Surgical Supports’. He thought I might find the contents interesting. Interesting tends to mean ‘take this home and dispose of it in your loft‘, for at least twenty years this generational passing the baton piecemeal has been going on regularly and relentlessly.

On Tuesday, I had a rummage through before depositing it in the attic and thus continuing the forgotten familial collective memory with an instinctual genetic imperative. My father’s latest assault on his roof-void proved to be a partial victory of sorts, the box contained several dog-eared photographs of old pets long gone, some volumes from the innocently named ‘How To’ series of books and a bundle or rack of magazines. These periodicals, dating from September 1935 to July 1939 seemed to be of only passing interest initially; perhaps a smile and puzzle at bygone quirks and a puzzle and frown at the prevailing climate of attitude in those halcyon inter-war dancing years. However, I found pressed and neatly nestling between some of the pages were a few drawings by my great-grandmother Effie Stimp, and on closer inspection her name also appeared in print. At last a possibly mildly famous antecedent, I felt like soon Dame surely, if not already, Joanna, for goodness‘ sake Lumley.

Long before I was born, Effie had tragically passed away when the side-car of my great-grandfather’s Triumph motorcycle had become sadly and suspiciously detached and she had overtaken two Morris Minors and a horse before coming to grief at the stanchion of a bridge on the A10. Having never known her I have only ever had a vague impression of who she really was, my elderly parents being reticent to the point of huffy on the subject. However, here in this box was at last something tangible that can’t just be simply not-talked about, no more of the shushing and waving dismissals or conveniently interrupted interrogation with faked asthma attacks or an irresistible Midsomer Murders esuriency. At the next opportunity, I may well pose some uncomfortably penetrative questions. It seems Effie Stimp regularly drew cartoons for various magazines and I have scanned in one that appeared in the March 1936 edition of Good Housekeeping.

When I get time, I’ll scan some more, and if possible find out why this wife, woman and possible victim of great-grannycide became so un-talked about even in a preternaturally taciturn family.

Terry, if indeed Terry it is or ever was, has been delayed and his arrival and imminence of or not has lost the interest of the office-guys, who are now optimistically juggling World Cup fantasies, fears and covoluted permutations of possible outcomes, all of which conclude with England winning the whole thing. A rare chance, and one to be grabbed for the quadrennial Zeitgeist of flag waving around the world.