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”

Off to Germany

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Grandad has been busy today, getting ready for going to Germany tomorrow. This will be my last trip abroad for some time, so I'm going to enjoy it all the more. Next week it's Blackpool here in England, but that's another story!

As you may remeber, Nana Ann used to live and work in Germany (just like your cousin Michael who is living and workign in Switzerland) and she speaks German very well indeed. When I'm in Germany I'm going to have to amke a speech, so I have written it in English and Nana Ann is going to translate it into German for me. Also, I ahve had some e-mails from Germany in German, so I have had to send them to Nana Ann in London for her to translate those from German into English so I will know what they say.

The great thing is, Nana Ann is coming to Germany with me this one time. Not like her surpise visit to see me in Italy when I didn't know she was coming! She's going by train again, as she always does,as she doesn't like flying which I don't mind atall.

You know. I would love to take you with me to any country you car to name. Your cousin Elaine went to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand with your other Nana, and she really really enjoyed it. Maybe one 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”

Building a bridge

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

If Grandad had been able to take you for a walk yesterday, I would have taken you to where they are building a new bridge over a river. Not a big river, but big enough. Actually, I like to go and have a run past it every so often, to see how it is coming along.

Grandad used to build bridges just like that. Not actually build them personally, but I was in charhe of all the men and I had to make sure the bridge was built exactly so. Because if a bridge isn't built exactly so, it could fall down! This has actually happened in a few cases, but forntunatley not with any of the bidges I have built.

The first thing you look at is what carries the bridge over the river. Usually, as in this case, the main things that carry the load are steel beams. They're called I-beams, because they are shaped like the letter I. If you look at the end of the beam, you will see what I mean.

Then these beams have to rest on something very firm and very strong on either bank. They're called the abutments because they "abut" onto the bridge at either side. Agin, if the abutments aren't strong enough, the bridge could slide to one side or the other. Abutments are usually made of three strong walls on concrete, like a box with three sides. The open side is where the bridge joins onto the road on each bank. These concrete boxes are filled in with stones, which you could see riight now.

Then there's got to be railings on either side of the rbidge, to stop people falling into the water! Again, these have to be strong, just in case a car or a lorry were to crash into them and maybe go right through and down into the river with a big splash. That would be very dangerous. So tghe fences, called parapets, have to be built just so, like the brideg itself.

The cleverest thing is where the steel beams rest on the abutments on either side of the river. I can take you underneath to show you. You'll see that, inbetween the steel beams and a sort of shlf on each abutment, there is a thing that looks like a big square sandwich. Well it is a sandwich of sorts, but not made out of bread and jam! But is is "sandwiched" bewteen the baem and the abutment, and it's made of steel and very, very strong rubber. Yes, rubber! And the whole thing is stuck together with glue - a very special glue of course.

As well as the steel and rubber "sandwich" and the glue, there are bolts that a stuck onto the bottom of each beam at ecah end. These slot into holes drilled in the sandwich, just to make doubly sure they don't slide out and let the rbidge down with a bump. If you were here, I could arrange for you to see the beams lifted p by a big crane and slotted into place - that's really exciting.

So whenever we see a bridge, I can take you underneath and show you how it is made.

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”

Paper, tin, bottles, cardboard

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Tom, I could have done with your help today. After putting it off for weeks and weeks, Grandad finally got round to clearing out a load of rubbish, mainly paper. Any time you come to my house (except for the next few days) you're bound to see piles and piles of old newspapers. Add to that lots of old letters and files that are so old they really have to go - to the paper bank, of course.

Then they'll be taken away and turned into new paper, saving a lot of trees. Now I know you can't carry a great lot, but there was a bit of a wind blowing today and I know you could chase after all the bits of paper that get blown about when I'm putting them into the paper bank. Then there's the can bank - that's easy, cans are very light - and the bottle bank. That's best of all, because it's great fun dropping the bottles into the bottle bank with a great crash. You could have done that - with the help of a chair to stand on.

Then there's the cardboard to be got rid of. We have a lot of books and paper that come into the house, and they all come in cardboard boxes. Some of these cardboard boxes are very useful to keep things in, but there are far tooo many of them. So its off to the recycling centre where they take in all sorts of stuff, cardboard, old tellys and so on. The people there can often repair these things or get bits out of them that they can sell - and why not?

On the way I drove along the river where there are lots of place to play and have picnics. One place by the river I noticed is changing. This is on a bend of the river, and each year the bend in the river gets a bit bigger and some of the bak falls away into the river. Eventually the river will reach the road, and then what will happen? I suppose they's have to put stones there to stop the road being swept away as well.

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”

To the top of Durham Cathedral

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Today Grandad went to Durham City, so I thought I'd tell you about your cousin Elaine when she was not much older than you and I first took her there. First let me tell you that Durham has a fine castle and an even more magnificent cathedral. They were built by the Normans who came over with William the Conquerer in 1066 and their descendants - huge stone buildings that recah to the sky. The Normans built these on the "peninsular" which is a huge rock in a loop of the River Wear that goes right round so much, it almost makes an island. The Normans built there because, with the river on three sides and very steep banks leading down to the river, it wa an easy place to defend. Remember the Normans conquered this country in 1066 and it was in the North of England that therfe was the most resistance.

If you come to Durham by train, the railway is very high up, and you have a great view of the Castle and the Cathedral as you come into Durham Station.

Anyway, I was telling you about your cousin Elaine when she was a little girl and I brought her to Durham. We were walking past Durham Cathedral when Elaine looked up to the top of the Cathedral's biggest tower. She said: Are those people up there?" and I said "Yes" and Elaine said "Can we go up there too?" so I said "Yes" even though I was a it scared because I don't like heights. Anyway, we went into the Cathedral, paid our admission, and went into the big central tower. It was a long way up! A long, long way, up a stone spiral staircase. I think there are 550 steps (I'm not so sure about this, but there are a lot of steps.)

Every so often, there is a landing where you can look out over the town and the countryside. I thought that little Elaine would get tired, but not a bit of it. She went bounding up the steps, all the way up, just stopping every so often to look out through the openings in the stone walls. The we reached the top!

It was really scary. We were so high up, it was almost like being up in an aeroplane. There is a walkway round the top of the tower, with a stone balustrade you can look through, but scaredy old Grandad Kit stuck by the door, holding tight onto the wall! But - and you've guessed - little Elaine went running round the top of the tower, round all four sides, looking through the balustrade on each side. She even stuck he head through the holes to get a better look! There was no danger, because the holes were too small for her to get through. But I was really pleased when Elaine said it was time to go down.

It would be nice if I could take you to the top of Durham Cathedral, but don't expect me to go walking round the top like your cousin Elaine, although you are welcome to do so yourself.

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”

Tough test for Grandad

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

I was so busy yestreday telling you about Saltburn pier and its marvellous funicular railway, that I forgot to tell you about the very tough test I had in the hospital. Two nurses put me on a treadmill with all sorts of wires attcahed to me, to test my heart and see if there is anything wrong with it.

Now Grandad has been a runner most of his life. I have run marathons and hundreds of other races, so I though a test on a treadmill would be easy peasy. No, it wasn't. It was all right at first, as the treadmill started slowly. Gradulaly the speed increased, but I still wasn't worried because it wasn't going too fast for me. Then they started to ake it steeper.

So as well as going faster and faster, the traedmill was going steeper and steeper, something I never do when I'm in the gym. So eventually I had to give in and ask them to stop, which of course they did. We'll have to see what comes out of these tests, but there didn't seem to be anything untoward.

Yesterday I went to see a lady. She is the mother of twins, a boy and a girl. The funny thing is, she is a twin herself - she has a twin brother. This is what they mean when they say twins run in the family. Imagine having a brother or a sister just like you and exactly the same age. In many ways that woulkd be great.

Soemtimes twins are identical - looking exactly alike. That can be scary, especially if each twin know what the other is thinking all the time, even without speaking to each other. This does happen, I can assure you!

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”

Funiculi, funicula

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Grandad is actually singing "Funiculi, funicular" and you might wonder if I've gone mad, btu not quite. If there's anything I'm mad about, its piers, seaside piers. In fact, Grandad is thinking of visiting every pier in England and wales - all 55 of them! But first I'm going to have to get someone to pay me to write about them! So today I went off to see the pier that's nearest to me, at Saltburn on the Yorkshire coast. And it was a great day.

The sun was shining, the sea was sparkling, the coast was clear, there was the pier itself of course, but best of all was the funicular railway. This is a very unusual railway, very unusual indeed. Not only does it run up and down the very steep, sloping cliff, to take people up and down between the top of the cliff and the bottom of the cliff where the pier goes out across the sea, but it is also worked - by water!

Yes, water. There are only two other funicular pier railways worked by water in the whole of the country. If only I could show it to you and tell you how it works. You see, there are two cars like small railway or tram carriages that run up and down the two sets of tracks. As one car goes down, the other comes up and vice versa. Each of the two cars has a big water tnak underneath.

Now, the car at the top oif the slope has no water in it at first. Then when the conductor on the bottom rings the bell, to signal that there are people in the bottom car who want a ride up to the top, the engineer at the top starts to let water into the tank attached to the bottom of the car at the top. Now water is heavy - if you don't know how heavy it is, try carrying a bucket full of water as I did many times as a boy, and you will see just how heavy water is - very heavy indeed.

When the water in the top car gets to be heavier that all the people in the bottom car, the top car starts to go down the track and the bottom car comes up to the top. The great thing is, no matter how many people there are in the bottom car, and how heavy they are, eventually there will be enough water in the top car to weigh mare then them! Then when the bottom car gets up to the top and the top car gets to the bottom, the same thing happens again.

Phew! That was a lot of work.

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”

250 million year old tree

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Now you might think Grandad is quite old (66 years old) but imagine somthing 250 million years old. A 250 million year old tree, in fact. I saw it today - it's in a town near where I live. Actually this tree has turned into stone (I'll explain how this happens another day) but you can still see its a tree in every detail. The reason for my trip was to see a man about a dog (no, that's just an expression) it was to see a man about a book (of course), a book he has written about his long and exciting life. I'm going to help him get it printed and published.

At the same time, I went to see your Auntie Rosie who has just gone to live in this particular town. I had a good chat with her about how she's getting on, and about your cousin Elaine who I haven't seen for a while but will do soon enough I hope. Elain is a lot older than you (14) and is very busy doing her own thing, including playing in a band! This is just what I was doing at her age (actually at 15) so I'm very pleased.

Nana Ann is very busy at work because people often don't come into work for one exceuse or another. That leaves Nana Ann, who never ever mises a day off work, with lots more to do. She does grumle a bit (to Grandad!) but she gets on with it, of course.

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”

St George's Day

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Did you know today was St George's Day? Every country has its patron saint, and St George is the patron saint of England. His flag is the red cross on a white background, which is also part of the union jack. The Union Jack is the red white and blue flag that combines the flags of England, Scotland and Wales. When England are playing in the World Cup, you will see lots of St George's flags flying from houses and from cars. I had two St George's flags flying from my car during the last World Cup, but someone tore them off. I wonder why?

St George is supposed to have killed the dragon to rescue a fair maiden from being eaten by the dragon That's just a story - but a good one. I love stories and I bet you do. I have told lots and lots of stories to my children and to my grandaughter, your cousin, and I would love to tell you stories. One day, you can tell me stories too.

Now it's back home to do all the work I haven't done while I've been away (although I've done a fair amount, waiting around in airports).

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”

Guernica

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

Today we went to Guernica, this special town I was telling you about. Now you're really too young to understand, but seventy years ago there was a terrible civil war in spain. A civil war is, instead of people from different countries fighting each other, people from the same country fight each other. And during this fighting, the town of Guernica was heavily bombed. Lots of buildings were destroyed in the bombing, and hundreds of people were killed. Although it was seventy years ago, everybody remembers it because it was such a terrible thing at the time.

Fortunately, the civil war came to an end and now the Spanish people are at peace with each other. But they never forget the terrible things that happened all those years ago.

After visiting the town and seeing lots of things in the meseum in Guernica, including some of the bombs and shells that fell on the town but didn't explode, we went up into the mountains to have lunch in an old farmhouse that has been turned into a restaurant. I say lunch, but in fact it was a huge feats with six different courses. I ate so much, I didn't go to the dinner this evening, because I couldn't possible eat another thing (and I'm trying to keep my weight down).

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”

Bilbao - where's that?

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 am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this and then you will know that Grandad Kit and Nana Ann always did care for you, right from the day you were born.

I gave you a clue yesterday. Bilbao's in Spain, on the north side. But it's a great city, and there's lots you would enjoy. There's a walkway alongside the river, large and samll pay areas, a huge adventure playground, and lots of steps up to this big museum. Then there are the stautes. One is of a great big spider. If you go underneath bewteen her long legs, you can see that's it's a Mother spider because she is carrying a lot of eggs in her belly. Just as well those eggs can't hatch - you wouldn't like to have a load of big baby spiders running around!

There's a tram that runs along the river. Grandad went on it, but only after you have to go into a sort of bank place to buy it. There are lots of bridges across the river, but no boats. The boats don't come this far up the river now - they used to - even though the tide comes in and out twice a day, just like on the River Thames and the River Tyne.

Tomorrow we go to a special town called Guernica.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann