Well, I saw the consultant this week, a slightly tanned guy with a long beard and a shawl. He touched my knee, and said, "You can walk my son."

Lightening flashed from the sky. I cowered but I was chuffed and joked, "Any chance of five fishes and chips?"

He glanced at me with a knowing expression on his face. Before my eyes my urine sample turned into vinegar. 'My brother likes this on his dinner,' he said, gesturing with the sample. I nodded, twisting...

Within a year of my grandfather's death, my grandmother had met another man, and she married him quickly. He was a widower, although he had lost his wife many years before. Whatever else might have been said about him there was one thing that stood testament to his character and that was that he had raised six kids on his own and done an outstanding job doing so.

Four boys and two girls ranging in ages from 11 - 25 and for all they had been through they were exceptional. When their...

Although the war was a rather big interruption in the early years of their marriage, my grandparents survived intact, although was tragedy. Like so many people my grandmother’s brother signed up to fight in the war, serving with the RAF. His plane never came back, lost somewhere over the sea.

But life continued, it always does, and they began to build a new life for themselves. They moved to Moss Side, Manchester, where they started a business selling prams.

They...

My grandmother was born in the early 1900’s, in Birmingham, and unlike my grandfather she did not come into wealth, and although not poor her family did not have much. She was one of four siblings, the youngest. Like my grandfather the set up was three girls and one boy.

Soon after she was born her father died. Although she did not talk about it much her childhood was not a good one; she was virtually brought up by her oldest sister and grandmother. She was virtually ignored by her...

Slipping back through the generations, my great grandfather on my mum's side (her father's father) was Russian. A Russian Jew to be in fact.

He came from a rather well to do family, one of two brothers living in a time of great upheaval and change. Somehow despite all of this, and perhaps even more strangely because of the distance involved he met the daughter of a merchant from Holland. We once thought it was a diamond merchant, but apparently this was not the case, although precious...