Perhaps one of the best things I have inherited is my Nanna’s postcard album.

I remembered it the other day.

It’s one of those things, like my tin collection, that I’m not really sure what to do with.

It sits in my bedroom gathering dust at the moment. Which seems a shame.

Under it’s unpreposessing leathercloth cover is an utterly fascinating collection.

The cards within range from views of beauty spots and holiday resorts, to birthday and Christmas cards.

Some are gently humorous…

Many are beautiful…

Some refer to historical events – Nanna was born in 1897 and was fond of reminding me that she had lived through three wars (the Boer war, The Great War and the Second World War).

I can’t really remember how I ended up with the album.

I think it was a gift from either my mum or my dad. I’m sure it came to me before they died, rather than when we cleared their house. Something to remember Nanna by.

In monetary terms it’s not hugely valuable. But for me, the nicest thing about the album isn’t the money it might be worth. Or even the artwork on the postcards.

I grew up with Nanna. She lived with my parents all their married lives. Her husband – my paternal grandfather – died of throat cancer around the time my parents married. Nanna came to live with them – and never left.

This was often a strain. We lived in a smallish three bedroomed house. Nanna occupied a double bedroom, along with her 1920s oak bedroom furniture set (wardrobe, tallboy, blanket box and dressing table). My sister and I, meanwhile, shared a tiny box room with bunk beds, until I was about eleven.

In later years, Nanna suffered from what is now called dementia. She became deaf and forgetful and very self-pitying. She idolised my dad. And she was not always very nice to my mum.

But when I was little, she was always around to tell me stories of her childhood in rural Yorkshire.

She could recite poems in Yorkshire dialect. She could act, and did funny voices, and sang old-fashioned songs from her stage-school days.

She had a long life, and at times a sad one. She lost a baby sibling born prematurely, because there were no incubators in Yorkshire back then. And her best-loved sister died aged around ten, of tuberculosis. She outlived all her siblings and friends.

The album serves to remind me that nanna wasn’t always the grumpy old lady I remember from her later years.

She came from a world now long gone, where children were caned at school for being late and fathers knocked their sons off their chairs at mealtime for poor table manners.

Where fiancés were sent packing by mothers who didn’t approve of them.

The album shows some of her happier moments.

It is something I will never part with. ♥