Painted her letters...

I spent part of this evening down at my great aunt's house looking through a host of papers, documents and other bits and bobs that make up a great treasure trove of history that document part of my family history. I've had a few such evenings of late and each visit produces a few great little surprises.

Tonight came the realisation that Ed (my great aunt) has been living in her current house for 65 years, as confirmed by the orignal property deeds. Her dad (my great grandfather) purchased the house with cash for a grand sum of £400 way back in 1944. The family moved in in June 1944, with World War II raging around them, and Ed has been there ever since. I find that incredible, especially in a world in which there seems so much fluidity of movement.

Other documents that came up were a little more sobering. There was the doctors report on my great uncle Bob (Ed's brother) and his need to have a portion of his leg amputated when he was a young lad, closely followed by a court settlement which awarded him £1000 (this was back in the late 1920s so must have been quite a large sum of money) because of said amputation. I also found receipts for funeral expenses and tax adjustments related to family deaths. In a sense this opened up a little more of a world that I have heard much of in passing (conversations between various family members who knew all these folk) but knew so little of, being born after many of them had passed away.

In the midst of these more official documents I also found two pages of a letter written in old Lancashire dialect which, while interesting in itself, led on to a debate between my Mum and Ed as to who it could belong to, one option being my Nan (who passed away a few years back). Although it was decided she probably didn't write the letter, Ed recalled something that my Nan's work colleagues used to note about her letters - that she 'painted her letters' - meaning I think that they were so well written and phrased that they were more a work of art than communication.

I like that phrase - painting a letter. I know its tremendously arty in its expression but its also quite thought provoking in the sense of inspiring a change in your own letter writing style.