Louisa Davies.

As part of something we are all involved with in work regarding celebrating the strengths and specialnesss of older people I have had to take a picture of a picture today. I am using both my grandmothers.....Louie and Flo.... as examples of extraordinary but very different women. Both widowed very young, both raised families alone and always worked, both very well known in their own little communities. But one was an incredibly gentle soul with never a bad word for anyone and preciously naïve all her life. The other was as sharp as a knife, shrewd, resilient, and the best story teller I have ever met with a wicked sense of humour. The former was Flo...and we 6 cousins would stay with her every other weekend in her tiny terraced house with no bathroom and fight over the comics and sweets you were allowed to take to the outside toilet. The latter was Louie and she lived with my family always and so was a daily part of my life until she died when I was 17. Flo worked in a munitions factory during the war, her children evacuated to Wales, her husband was killed at sea and she herself was bombed out 3 times and lived in a bread van for a while. Louies husband never got to go to war...he was already diagnosed with terminal cancer. She nursed him at home , as well as always being the woman that delivered all babies and laid corpses out for the neighbourhood, refused to let her children be evacuated, ran an Open all Hours shop from 5am til 10pm every day and also ran most of the black market in Anfield through it. Both had an enormous influence on my life and values and as I've got older my respect for them has just deepened as I've understood more the strength of character they both had and the sacrifices they made....and the humour with which they made them.
This is my maternal grandmother...Louisa.