grandad kit

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Red sky, full moon

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Yesterday I told you the moon was nearly full. Well, today it was absolutely full and shining brightly. But before that, there was a beautiful red sky just before nightfall. You must have heard the saying "red sky at night, shephers's delight; red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning." What that means is that - supposedly - if there's a red sky at nightime, it'll be sunny the next day; but if there's a red sky in the mroning, it will rain. So we'll wait and see if it's sunny tomorrow.

Nana Ann has just rung up. The hotel where we used to stay in Yorkshire is no longer run by the same people that used to run it. They have moved away, and new people have bought the hotel and have take it over. But these new people are charging a lot more for us to stay there, so Nana Ann has told me to find another hotel which doesn't charge so much but still in the same street as the first hotel!

So I'd better get onto the internet and find another hotel that doesn't charge too much.

Love from

Garndad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Church with the crooked spire

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Today Grandad went to Chesterfield. The town church has a crooked spire that can be seen for miles around. You can see it from the railway, as I have many a time. Today was the first time I have seen this crooked spire close up. It seems that when they were building the church, the spire - that's the big pointed roof on top of the church - started to twise round. Probabaly the wood they were using was not strong enough. But they kept on building it and eventually it was finished.

For some reason this crooked church spire did not fall down, and it is still there to se to this very day. Grandad went to see a lady who lives in a very beautiful old house. There ae all sorts of passageways and staircases in the house, and upstairs all the rooms seem to have their floors on different levels, so you have to go up into one room and down into the next. This lady's grandchilden have a whale of a time running down the corridoors from rom to room, and climbing up and down the stairs, and hiding in the attics! I bet you would have a lovely time there too.

It was very early in the morning and dark when I set out, but the moon was almost full and very bright. Oh, and this house has lots of different gardens with hedges and gates and walls. You could have a terrific game of hide and seek - you could alomst hide all day!

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Getting ready for a long journey

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

I told you that I was going on a business trip tomorrow. That means Grandad will have to get up very, very early indeed to get there in time. So I'll have to get to bed really early tonight, which I don't really like doing. Also, I've tried to get everything ready in advance so I don't have to spend time in the morning getting things together, and also so I don't forget anything. May a time I've been miles down the road when I've realised that I've forgotten something, but it's always too late to turn round and go back. One thing I always try to remeber to take is a spare pair of glasses. just in case I lose my regular glasses or they get broken.

Todat was a nice, sunny day, so I decided to tidy up the garden path. Now Nana Ann used to do all the gardeneing - Grandad jsut doesn't like gardening atall - but she is here so little the garden has got really overgrown. The front path has got narrower and narrower as soil and leaves have gradually accumulated on either side, just leaving a narrow way clear dow the middle.

First I got a big bag and collected all the rubbish that has been blown into our garden and (some of it) thrown into our garden by people passing by. Then I got a spade and cleared the path down both sides. It looks a lot better now, but there is a broad, dark strip down each side where all the soil and leaves used to be. Now what we need is a good heavy rain shower to make the path nice and neat again.

I'll let you know what happens tomorrow. I'm going somewhere I've never been before, which is a bit unusual for me.

Lots of love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Grandad working hard

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Two days now, Grandad has hardly been out of the house due to having a lot of work to do. Fortunately, I love my work so it is not a burden to me. That's the secret, I think - find work that you enjoy doing!

The reason I've been working so hard over the weekend is because I know I'm going to be busy tomorrow. I go off on a business trip to the Midlands on Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, so I must make sure that everything is ready. I've had a look at the map to see where I'm going. I know a lot of people who drive cars and vans and lorries have this thing called a "SatNav" with them - that's a really clever machine that tells them where to go and which roads to drive on. Most of the time the SatNav works really well, but every so often it takes people down narrow tracks where there's hardly any road atall.

A man has been telling me a story about his great-grandfather who had a threshing machine. That's a machine that threshes the corn after harvest. What it did was to separate the corn from the stalks. Years and years ago the threshing used to be done by hand. The farmer and all his workers used to spread out the corn on the gorund or on the floor of the barn, and hit it with sticks to get the ears of corn separated from the stalks. Then they started to use machines, but this was before cars and lorries had been invented. So horses used to pull these threshing machines from farm to farm and thresh the corn at each farm in turn.

These threshing machines were worked by steam power, but they still had to be pulled from farm to farm by teams of horse - great big draught horses with big hairy feet. Then someone had the bright idea of making the staem engine drive the machine along the road, rather like the old steam engines used to pull the trains along the railway tracks. That meant they didn't need to use horses.

Well, this man was telling me that his great-grandfather used to drive one of the very first threshing machines that rode along the road under its own power, using the same steam engine that he used to thresh the corn. And the very first time it came to the town where I live, to the farm that used to be right behind our house, this great big machine with its steam engine, that propelled itself along the road by itself, caused a great sensation in the town. The people of the town hed never ever seen anything like it before! All they had seen before, were carts and machines all pulled by horses. There were so many crowds of people who came to look at this machine that they'd never seen before, that no threshing was done for two whole days!

Do you know what they call the stalks of corn after the ears have been taken off? It's called straw, and it used to be used to put on the roofs of houses. There are still a few houses with straw on the roofs instead of tiles or slates - they're called thached cottages because a straw roof is called thatch.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Weekends with Mam and Dad

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Nana Ann and Grandad tend to do work every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm sure with your Mam and Dad it's different. During the week I expect you go to nuresery school or a playgroup, while your Mam and Dad are most probably working. So weekends are really special - they were for me when your Mam was a little girl, and for me when I was a boy with my Mam and Dad.

Every weekend we would do somthing different, soemthing with the whole family. With Mam and Dad generally not working, you can all spend time together, staying in the house or going our somwhere. On a Saturday it would usually be shopping, and then a football match or some other sporting event, and the pictures. The on Sunday would be the family day out, with a trip to the coast or a museum or a stately home.

One day I'm sure you'll tell me all about the nice times you had with your Mam and Dad, going to interesting places.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Running at night

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.
Grandad was very busy today, as usual. I had to go out and see various people, as well as going shopping at our local superstore. I quite like this, as I see lots of people - some of who I know - doing different things, and I find it all very interesting.

Tonight I wnt for a run, in the dark of course. Mostly at night I like to run where there are street lights, but I came along a road which is being repaired. So I had to be extra careful, to make sure that there were no holes in the road that I might fall into.

A few years ago, Grandad had a big crash in my car. I was driving along a road that was being repaired, but didn't realise it. The reason was that the local people had pulled the barrier at one end of the roadwaorks to one side so that could drive through more easily to get to their houses instead of having to go a long way round. So I didn't notice that there was a barrier there atall. At the other end of the roadworks, I drove straight into the barrier at that end.

I was very, very lucky. A big pole smashed right through my windscreen but on the passenger side, not the driver's side. So it missed me, and as I was driving on my own, there was nobody sitting in the passenger seat. But the car was all smashed up. Now I was running in a race the next day, so I rang up Nana Ann and told her to find out where I could hire a car to take me to the race the next day. And that's what I did. But if I had been paying more attention, I wouldn't have driven into the barrier atall. It was at night, and the barrier was not lit, but that's no excuse.

Now I try to drive very carefully all the time. Not just for myself, but for anyone else who might get hurt if I had another accident. And I'm absolutely sure that your Mam and Dad tell you not to run out into the road, not ever, and not to ride your tricycle or your scooter on the road atall.

Keep yourself safe!

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Nana Ann very busy

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Grandad was off on the train today to go down to London for a meeting, coming back the same night. So I asked Nana Ann if I could see her after work so we could go and have a meal together at our favourite cafe. But Nana Ann said she was so busy, she would only be able to see me for half an hour! So we met at a pub near the station and had just enough time for a drink and a chat before I had to catch my train back up North. Nana Ann saw me off on the platform.

But it took me a long, long time to get back home. Halfway through the journey, the train stopped and then started to go back to the last station where it had stopped a few minutes before. These trains are powered by an electric current from the overhead power lines - you can see these power lines quite easily on all the main railways - and some naughty people had damaged the wires so there was no electricity coming through.

The they railway people had to get a diesel locomotive to pull our train to the next main station. You know about diesel - it's much like petrol, and cars and lorries and buses can use either petrol or diesel to run on. You can see both petrol and diesel at any garage when your Mam or Dad drives in to top up with fuel. But you have to be careful not to put the wrong fuel in your car! Grandad has a diesel car, but twice in recent years I've put petrol in by mistake. Fortunately, that doesn't cause any permanent damage - although the car soon stops and won't run any more becaues the engine has petrol in it and not diesel. But if you put diesel into a petrol car, that does cause a lkot of damage and you might have to have a new engine put in.

Anyhow, this diesel locomotive - which of course doesn't need electricity to run on - pulled our train to the next station. Then we had to get off that train and on to another train which eventually took us to our home station. So Grandad got home very, very late and went straight to bed.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

People buying my books

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

You know that Grandad writes books, and I have written quite a few, but it's getting them published and printed that's the problem. And even when they are published and printed, thta's no good unless people buy them! And if my books are not in the bookshops, then the only way that people can buy them is on the internet. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that my latest book is selling quite well, so I might make a little bit of money from it - but not enough yet.

Next week I'm, going to see a nice lady who wants me to write a book for her. She lives in a beautiful big house. I've never been there before, but I've seen pictures of it. I'm looking forward to that very much.

I've finally got round to putting all the dates of all the birthdays of all my young relatives in my diary, including yours of course. You can be sure you will get a nice card from me and Nana Ann when your fourth birthday comes round, and a present which I've already mentioned. I know it's a long time before your birthday, but you'll just have to be patient.

I told you about the rose in our front garden. It's still blooming, despite all the rain and the snow and the wind and the frost. It looks a little ragged round the adges, but it's still a beautiful white and pale pink. Every time I go in and out of the house, it makes me smaile.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

More soup!

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Grandad was in Newcastle again today "to see a man about a dog." This is a funny saying, because it doesn't mean what it says! No, I did see a man, but not about a dog. This is just a phrase I use when I'm going to do some business with someone, but I'm not sure of the outcome. Rather than get my hopes up that our meeting will be successful - because you never can tell - I say "I'm going to see a man about a dog" so that if nothing comes of it and I've been wasting my time, I don't have to tell Nana Ann or anyone else that I had a wasted journey. Funnily enough, Nana Ann's Dad used to say exactly the same thing!

As it happens, my meeting was postponed but I was still able to do some useful work. At dinner time, I went to a big supermarket, expecting that it would have a cafe where I could get soem lunch. To my surprise, it didn't have a cafe. So I crossed the road to a small place - a bit expensive - but they have very nice soup. So I had that, and it kept me going until teatime.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

More meetings!

I am your other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure.

Grandad wasn't able to do much work today, because most of the day was taken up with meetings. These were in Middlesbrough, where I used to work, so it was quite nice going back there. I used to share a car with two other men, and Nana Ann used to come with us as well - she doesn't drive - so there were four people sharing the one car, which is a good thing.

The bad thing was that when we were driving to Middlesbrough early in the morning, the sun was just rising in the east and it used to shine in the eyes of whovere was driving that car. And in the evening, when we were driving back home again, the sun was again shinging in our eyes as it was setting in the west. Nowe if we had been living on the other side of Middlesbrough, we could have had the sun behind us in the morning and in the evening as well, so that would have been better for the driver instead of having to screw up his eyes with the sun shining in them all the time.

Tonight Grandad went down to the cricket club to see his friend and have a drink. This friend is making a present for another of Grandad's young relatives. Maybe one day he'll make a present for you.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann