My incredible Nanna passed away almost 5 years ago it was 1st December 2011, after suffering with Dementia for a few years. Which really feels like losing your loved one twice and in different ways. When she was moved into a home, everything had to be emptied from her house. Including some diaries she had kept over the years. As you can see from the above picture from 1953. She had written birthdays in and almost wrote in it every day. She was 22 and then turned 23 in the August of that year. I thought it was a perfect way to celebrate her memory by posting this blog post!

What I have found is that in 1953 it was a big deal to wash your hair and have a bath, which usually happened just once per week, this is documented in the diary. Visiting your friends to watch TV as not everyone had them, writing letters (my Grandad was in the RAF and used to go away a lot) and receiving them. But the main form of entertainment and well enjoyment was the cinema (and sometimes theatre) I am very lucky to therefore say that my Nanna actually wrote in each film she went to see. She used to go most of the time with my Grandad, her best friend, her sister and occasionally on her own.

I have therefore decided to turn this into a blog project and attempt to watch all of the films she went to see at the cinema in 1953! This is going to be rather tricky for some of the films, I am still trying to work out some of them as well struggling with the writing and then trying to cross it over with a film from either 1952 or 1953 as it gets later in the year, the only thing is though that sometimes older films were also shown. The fact that some films have since had a name change as not helped at times either! She did seem to get bored of writing in the diary by November as it had less in and hardly anything at all in December, maybe she actually lost it for a while?

Continue reading “Me Nanna’s Diary – 1953” →