Just recently I used Ancestry UK to check on this branch of the family
It came as a surprise to find that, in 1901, Great Grandfather was a master wheelwright. Bakery seems like a big change. I guess the bottom dropped out of the market for wooden wheels with the arrival of the new fangled motor cars. But people will always want bread. And cakes.
I cant remember a time when he was not confined to his bed or his chaise longue by the fire in the sitting room behind the shop. The business was in the hands of his wife & 5 of their surviving children. The men did the baking, 3 great aunts served in the shop, under the gimlet eye of great grandma.
I guess grandfather must have had a stroke. Besides the paralysis he dribbled a lot & had difficulty speaking. My father behaved very tenderly towards him. Father figure, I suppose, since his own father had died young. Dad often crouched by his side & they seemed to have little trouble conversing.
Great grandfather died 3 times. The first time the doctor came & pronounced him dead, but he sat up as the undertakers men were carrying him downstairs in his coffin. (Some exaggeration here, surely) . The second time he was discovered when the woman came to lay him out.
He died for the last time when I was 14. My mother & I did not go to the funeral, only my father, wearing an awesomely solemn black tie.
Grandfather was used to being taken out on ceremonial drives by his 2 spinster daughters - the original Sunday drivers. One of these trips was further than usual - they came to our house after I had passed the 11+. I was required to put on my as yet unworn school uniform.
Somewhere there is a photo of the pair of us in the garden, me standing proudly by his side. Him wearing what looks suspiciously like a chortle on his face.
