France Family Portrait

Taken circa 1908, this shows the France family in all their finery outside the Temperance Hotel, Quernmore, Lancashire. My mother, Mabel France, is seated extreme left.
By the time I met the surviving members of the family, the bloom had faded on their cheeks. Isabel was white-haired, Lucy frail and sunken-eyed, Maggie toothless and withered, Mary gaunt and lame and William was wheelchair-bound (This is the New Brighton crew). What a contrast to the handsome people in the photograph. Whatever positive energy you attach to the ageing process, there is something obscene about the physical decay involved.
The only other family member I knew was Uncle Bartle (Bartholomew), who had married Mildred, a posh lady from Weston-super-Mare, and who was therefore a cut above the rest. They were moderately well-off, childless and snobbish, but they always treated me as an interesting kind of rough farmboy from the wilds of Shropshire, brought to their door by the youngest surviving France, my mother Mabel. Mildred offered wonderful cakes for tea, so I forgave her for being posh.

And now, all we have is this faded photograph. Gone to their well-earned Wesleyan rest, every one of them.

I never knew my mother's (or my father's) parents. My mother was 43 and my father 45 when I arrived, apparently heavy and noisy, at 3 a m on Friday 5 June 1936. I am so happy for my children that they knew both their paternal and maternal grandmothers, and for my grandchildren that they still have all four grandparents on the planet. It's a magical relationship.

Is it nice having a grandpa, Sophie?
Yes, Grandpa. Can we go to Grant's and buy gummybears?