2. It's a THANK YOU letter. So impressive to see in this age where etiquette is no longer a requisite. Like Jim and yourself, I was taught to write thank you letters and I taught my own children, but it's now remarkable for its quaintness rather than the norm.
4. The titles of grandparents. I'm Nanny, as was my mum and her mum. My husband is Pa. As was my maternal and paternal grandfather - identified by sir-name. My children called their paternal grandparents Mama and Dear-Dear. My closest friend is called Ai and I hope to read even more quirky ones in the comments here.
5. The trains sound wonderful. I love that Jim could ride through the garden. How utterly memorable for any young child.
Oh Prue, I’m so glad you enjoyed this post! Thank you so much. ☺️
I love those names for grandparents - how lovely! There are so many out there - one of my relations is ‘Granna’ to her grandchildren, which is a combination of ‘Grandma’ and ‘Nanna’. She’d come across the name in a children’s book she had been reading to HER children decades ago, and thought that if she ever became a grandmother she would use that name. Gorgeous!
I found myself picturing young James sitting at the kitchen table writing this note under orders from mom. Little did he know how meaningful and heartwarming it would become decades later. Thank you, Rebecca (and Jim).
LOL - small children (at least in my experience of being one) often feel they have more exciting things to do than writing letters, don’t they? We were so very glad when the letter turned up - Gah and Grandad had obviously taken great pleasure in receiving it all those years ago, and it was super to see that they’d kept it! Jim and I had a lovely time talking about his memories of all the things he’d mentioned in it. Such a precious thing!
Your Jim's thank you letter to his grandparents is so good, and your retelling of your first dot matrix printers and its Thank You notes is a blast from the past. On the calling of one's grandparents, my parents call their grandparents Oma and Opa, as they were Dutch. I called both sets of my grandparents Grandma and Grandpa and would include their last name in conversation so whomever I was speaking with, would know which set I was referring to: Grandma/Grandpa van Halsema, Grandma/Grandpa van den Berg. Your Brits have the best names for just about everything and everyone. I'm a fan.
When I was about 13 years old my father organized a trip to Wales for our family. We flew from JFK to London to Manchester, then spent a week in a grand hotel in Barmouth. My dad, being a poetic fellow, assembled us all on the Barmouth footbridge over Afon Mawddach at low tide and recited Crossing the Bar from memory. Forty years later, a soloist sang a version of the Tennyson poem at his memorial service. Not a dry eye in the house, especially mine! And I can always remember him wrong-side-driving us around Wales, and when the mood struck, he'd declaim "Blaenau FFestiniog!" for the sheer pleasure of it. He probably had the pronunciation wrong, but we weren't in a position to criticize.
How did Jim reacquire this letter? Upon Gah’s death?
What a sweet Thank you note and good on Jim’s parents for most likely encouraging the note.
I love all the various names grandparents give themselves. My FIL was Papa Ted because our kids couldn’t say the word, Grandpa. My mom is Bubbe to my kids. So much love in these names.
We’ve had the letter for a while. Jim’s Grandad passed away (aged 104 and a half!) in 2012, and various pieces of paper came our way at that point. It’s only fairly recently, though, that Jim found it and realised that what he had was one of his own letters! 🤣
Papa Ted and Bubbe are such lovely names for grandparents - awesome!
Aww. Children's letters with their wild attempts at spelling are so wonderful. I have saved all of my son's. Jim's shortening of yoghurt to yugot made me laugh. My eight-year-old boy left a note on the kitchen counter one day that said "By Yurt!!". So I added it to my shopping list without even questioning... He still cannot spell worth a damn, but give him a number or a measurement a circumference, and he knows exactly what to do with it. I really enjoyed your post today Rebecca.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this post, Sharron, and thank you so much for sharing your words about your son’s spelling!
‘By yurt’ is absolutely adorable! 🤣
I’m ever so behind both with responding to comments and with indulging in the always-a-treat treat of reading everything in my Substack inbox! All sorts of things going on around here - I’m hoping to catch up with your writing very soon! xxx
I hereby give you the right to pass on this week's 🌿Leaves silliness. Heart me and move on! ha ha ha. Heaven knows more is on the way. You can't possibly read it all. We are all of us swamped.
Ah, but having just read both your poem for men and the latest edition of your Metro series - both of which are fabulous - I need more, more, more, moooooooore!!!!!
I love this glimpse into Jim’s childhood! I have many boxes of letters under my bed that I will go through one day - mostly written to me when I went to college across the country. Lovely post.
Thanks so much, Jen! D’you know, I really, really wish I’d had the foresight in my younger days to keep letters (and journals, and diaries, and artwork, and and and and……). I’m at a time of my life now when I would have deeply appreciated owning such an archive of my life!
What a lovely story of a thank you letter Rebecca! Names for grandparents are wonderful glimpses into families; thanks for sharing yours and Jims, plus a few others. And I too love the snoopy notepaper!!!
I love this! The Snoopy paper! Gah & Grandad! The Bluebell railway! (We live not too far away and have had some wonderful adventures there). What a precious thing to still have. Makes me glad I nag my son to send written thank you letters to his grandparents. Though he is much less expansive in what he writes in them than 11 year old Jim was. Thanks for sharing 🩷
Thanks, Vicki! Of course - you're in Brighton, right? Not all that far at all!
We've spent many happy hours (and days, and evenings - oh, and our wedding reception!) there - it's a very special place. It's extra-special to have the family connection - Jim worked as a TTI (travelling ticket inspector) as a teenager, and the whole family, I gather, was always roped in to help Santa to wrap all the gifts in the run-up to the Santa Special every Christmas....!
I sometimes even wonder whether Jim had clipped MY ticket on one of my family's very many trips on the railway when I was a child. 🤭
I'm ever so behind on my reading - I spotted your latest post come in and I'm looking forward to enjoying it! Sending 🤗 in the meantime.
Oh, what joy! Hat tip to Jim's parents for instilling the habit, and to his grandparents for saving the letter.
Thank you notes are a love language for me, though I would still like to be better at sending them for things like gatherings and little acts of kindness. Receiving them, anymore, is such a gift! I tried to teach my children accordingly(forcibly when they were young) and for the most part, I think they are still in the habit. But I can't be sure.
Funnily enough, I was just today remarking to my own James (Jim) that I've not received any acknowledgement for a wedding gift I sent back in March. Now, I must admit to my own delinquency here: I was six months late sending the gift / check! But I am surprised that there has been no formal (or informal) note of receipt. The check has been cashed, I know that much. LOL!
I have two cousins, we were born six weeks apart. And being millennials, our lives have spanned both handwritten letters, and later, emails to each other. We have been writing letters (emails) for 25 years. All this to say - I have a binder of letters I received from the two of them over the years. We were very into gel pens. I have a folder of emails, too, though it’s not the same! I miss letters!
Though thank you notes were not really in vogue when I was a kid, you called on the phone to thank a relative for a gift! Jim’s letter is lovely.
What a delightful post! I’m SO glad that Grandad lived to 104. His passion for life is so obvious. It would have passed through the generations thankfully meaning that your James / Jim shared it. I predict a long and happy life for you two thankfully. A really lovely read. Thanks so much.
Yes, 104 was quite an age! And steam trains were his life’s work. For a long time the Bluebell had been trying to open up a section of track (the cutting had been used as a landfill site for years, so it was a huge, huge undertaking) in order to link the heritage line back up to the mainline at East Grinstead. One evening in October he’d been watching the local news and had seen the exciting report that the Bluebell had at last got there with the project. He passed away later that night, his life’s work having been accomplished. He wasn’t ill, just very old. His final journey was on his railway - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2218581/Bernard-Holden-Final-stop-Bluebell-Railway-founder-aged-104-coffin-draped-medals-carried-tracks-ahead-funeral.html.
The following March Jim and his nephew got to travel on the footplate (so, in the engine with the driver and fireman) on the first scheduled steam train from East Grinstead all the way down the line to the first station on the Bluebell. Such a proud moment for their family. xxx
I love that Snoopy paper!
Isn’t it just gorgeous?! 😍
So much to like on so many levels.
1. It's a LETTER!
2. It's a THANK YOU letter. So impressive to see in this age where etiquette is no longer a requisite. Like Jim and yourself, I was taught to write thank you letters and I taught my own children, but it's now remarkable for its quaintness rather than the norm.
4. The titles of grandparents. I'm Nanny, as was my mum and her mum. My husband is Pa. As was my maternal and paternal grandfather - identified by sir-name. My children called their paternal grandparents Mama and Dear-Dear. My closest friend is called Ai and I hope to read even more quirky ones in the comments here.
5. The trains sound wonderful. I love that Jim could ride through the garden. How utterly memorable for any young child.
Thanks for this, Rebecca.
Oh Prue, I’m so glad you enjoyed this post! Thank you so much. ☺️
I love those names for grandparents - how lovely! There are so many out there - one of my relations is ‘Granna’ to her grandchildren, which is a combination of ‘Grandma’ and ‘Nanna’. She’d come across the name in a children’s book she had been reading to HER children decades ago, and thought that if she ever became a grandmother she would use that name. Gorgeous!
"Dear Reader, I'm lost", has thus proven itself again to be the sweetest place on the internet. 🫶
Hear hear!
Awwwwww!!!!!!! THANK YOU!
Awwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!! What an absolutely lovely thing to say, Punit - thank you! ☺️
Thanking Jim for sharing his lovely childhood letter. Those trains sound fantastic !
Thank you so much, Maureen! I was so happy to be writing about it! 😊
I found myself picturing young James sitting at the kitchen table writing this note under orders from mom. Little did he know how meaningful and heartwarming it would become decades later. Thank you, Rebecca (and Jim).
LOL - small children (at least in my experience of being one) often feel they have more exciting things to do than writing letters, don’t they? We were so very glad when the letter turned up - Gah and Grandad had obviously taken great pleasure in receiving it all those years ago, and it was super to see that they’d kept it! Jim and I had a lovely time talking about his memories of all the things he’d mentioned in it. Such a precious thing!
Thank you so much for reading, Jim. 😊
Handwritten letters are the BEST! Thank you Rebecca for sharing this post today. :)
They most certainly are! Thanks, Julie!
you bet! :) I hope your week is off to a great start.
Your Jim's thank you letter to his grandparents is so good, and your retelling of your first dot matrix printers and its Thank You notes is a blast from the past. On the calling of one's grandparents, my parents call their grandparents Oma and Opa, as they were Dutch. I called both sets of my grandparents Grandma and Grandpa and would include their last name in conversation so whomever I was speaking with, would know which set I was referring to: Grandma/Grandpa van Halsema, Grandma/Grandpa van den Berg. Your Brits have the best names for just about everything and everyone. I'm a fan.
Thanks, Mary! My German au-pair kids called their grandparents Oma and Opa, too - or Omi and Opi if they were trying to inveigle treats out of them!
When I was about 13 years old my father organized a trip to Wales for our family. We flew from JFK to London to Manchester, then spent a week in a grand hotel in Barmouth. My dad, being a poetic fellow, assembled us all on the Barmouth footbridge over Afon Mawddach at low tide and recited Crossing the Bar from memory. Forty years later, a soloist sang a version of the Tennyson poem at his memorial service. Not a dry eye in the house, especially mine! And I can always remember him wrong-side-driving us around Wales, and when the mood struck, he'd declaim "Blaenau FFestiniog!" for the sheer pleasure of it. He probably had the pronunciation wrong, but we weren't in a position to criticize.
Oh Peter, what fantastic memories! Thank you so much for sharing this story! 😊
How did Jim reacquire this letter? Upon Gah’s death?
What a sweet Thank you note and good on Jim’s parents for most likely encouraging the note.
I love all the various names grandparents give themselves. My FIL was Papa Ted because our kids couldn’t say the word, Grandpa. My mom is Bubbe to my kids. So much love in these names.
Thanks, Carissa!
We’ve had the letter for a while. Jim’s Grandad passed away (aged 104 and a half!) in 2012, and various pieces of paper came our way at that point. It’s only fairly recently, though, that Jim found it and realised that what he had was one of his own letters! 🤣
Papa Ted and Bubbe are such lovely names for grandparents - awesome!
Aww. Children's letters with their wild attempts at spelling are so wonderful. I have saved all of my son's. Jim's shortening of yoghurt to yugot made me laugh. My eight-year-old boy left a note on the kitchen counter one day that said "By Yurt!!". So I added it to my shopping list without even questioning... He still cannot spell worth a damn, but give him a number or a measurement a circumference, and he knows exactly what to do with it. I really enjoyed your post today Rebecca.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this post, Sharron, and thank you so much for sharing your words about your son’s spelling!
‘By yurt’ is absolutely adorable! 🤣
I’m ever so behind both with responding to comments and with indulging in the always-a-treat treat of reading everything in my Substack inbox! All sorts of things going on around here - I’m hoping to catch up with your writing very soon! xxx
I hereby give you the right to pass on this week's 🌿Leaves silliness. Heart me and move on! ha ha ha. Heaven knows more is on the way. You can't possibly read it all. We are all of us swamped.
Ah, but having just read both your poem for men and the latest edition of your Metro series - both of which are fabulous - I need more, more, more, moooooooore!!!!!
You are a strange and wonderful woman. We could totally be pals...if we didn't live 5,500 miles apart....
Already pals, Sharron, just from a distance! 🗺️
I love this glimpse into Jim’s childhood! I have many boxes of letters under my bed that I will go through one day - mostly written to me when I went to college across the country. Lovely post.
Thanks so much, Jen! D’you know, I really, really wish I’d had the foresight in my younger days to keep letters (and journals, and diaries, and artwork, and and and and……). I’m at a time of my life now when I would have deeply appreciated owning such an archive of my life!
What a lovely story of a thank you letter Rebecca! Names for grandparents are wonderful glimpses into families; thanks for sharing yours and Jims, plus a few others. And I too love the snoopy notepaper!!!
Awww, thank you, Sabrina! I really enjoyed taking such a close look at Jim’s letter - and ‘interviewing’ him so I could write this post!
I love Snoopy, too - one of my childhood favourites! I’m giving away my age now, aren’t I?!
I love this! The Snoopy paper! Gah & Grandad! The Bluebell railway! (We live not too far away and have had some wonderful adventures there). What a precious thing to still have. Makes me glad I nag my son to send written thank you letters to his grandparents. Though he is much less expansive in what he writes in them than 11 year old Jim was. Thanks for sharing 🩷
Thanks, Vicki! Of course - you're in Brighton, right? Not all that far at all!
We've spent many happy hours (and days, and evenings - oh, and our wedding reception!) there - it's a very special place. It's extra-special to have the family connection - Jim worked as a TTI (travelling ticket inspector) as a teenager, and the whole family, I gather, was always roped in to help Santa to wrap all the gifts in the run-up to the Santa Special every Christmas....!
I sometimes even wonder whether Jim had clipped MY ticket on one of my family's very many trips on the railway when I was a child. 🤭
I'm ever so behind on my reading - I spotted your latest post come in and I'm looking forward to enjoying it! Sending 🤗 in the meantime.
Oh, what joy! Hat tip to Jim's parents for instilling the habit, and to his grandparents for saving the letter.
Thank you notes are a love language for me, though I would still like to be better at sending them for things like gatherings and little acts of kindness. Receiving them, anymore, is such a gift! I tried to teach my children accordingly(forcibly when they were young) and for the most part, I think they are still in the habit. But I can't be sure.
Funnily enough, I was just today remarking to my own James (Jim) that I've not received any acknowledgement for a wedding gift I sent back in March. Now, I must admit to my own delinquency here: I was six months late sending the gift / check! But I am surprised that there has been no formal (or informal) note of receipt. The check has been cashed, I know that much. LOL!
Does Jim still have any of the trains?
It's such a good habit to get into, isn't it? And as you say, a thank you letter is so lovely to receive!
Various trains now belong to family members, all of whom treasure the memories of Gah and Grandad.
♥️🚂 ♥️
I have two cousins, we were born six weeks apart. And being millennials, our lives have spanned both handwritten letters, and later, emails to each other. We have been writing letters (emails) for 25 years. All this to say - I have a binder of letters I received from the two of them over the years. We were very into gel pens. I have a folder of emails, too, though it’s not the same! I miss letters!
Though thank you notes were not really in vogue when I was a kid, you called on the phone to thank a relative for a gift! Jim’s letter is lovely.
Oh wow, Alison, that’s such a precious archive! Absolutely wonderful!
What a delightful post! I’m SO glad that Grandad lived to 104. His passion for life is so obvious. It would have passed through the generations thankfully meaning that your James / Jim shared it. I predict a long and happy life for you two thankfully. A really lovely read. Thanks so much.
Oh, how lovely. Thank you, Beth!
Yes, 104 was quite an age! And steam trains were his life’s work. For a long time the Bluebell had been trying to open up a section of track (the cutting had been used as a landfill site for years, so it was a huge, huge undertaking) in order to link the heritage line back up to the mainline at East Grinstead. One evening in October he’d been watching the local news and had seen the exciting report that the Bluebell had at last got there with the project. He passed away later that night, his life’s work having been accomplished. He wasn’t ill, just very old. His final journey was on his railway - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2218581/Bernard-Holden-Final-stop-Bluebell-Railway-founder-aged-104-coffin-draped-medals-carried-tracks-ahead-funeral.html.
The following March Jim and his nephew got to travel on the footplate (so, in the engine with the driver and fireman) on the first scheduled steam train from East Grinstead all the way down the line to the first station on the Bluebell. Such a proud moment for their family. xxx
How wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing all of that. Beautiful.
❤️❤️❤️