Nana

Nana

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the annual visit from my Nan. She stays at my parents house and usually stays for a few days. Our family home is in the village my grandmother was raised in, coming home for Christmas can stir nostalgic memories in her, which she often recounts.

Stories from her childhood, or the war, often dropping into conversation some form of terrifying ordeal, frightening scenarios that 60 years ago would have been considered common place. Today it was a little running list of her friends that had died giving birth, sobering to say the least.

Often her familiar voice washes over me, I then remember myself and look into her face. Each wrinkle and laughter line stands out like a thread in a tapestry creating an image of this lovely lady in front of me. Each sign of age is a pledge that frankly, this lady knows her stuff!

As she sits by the fire her descriptive narrative really evokes the scene. She's a great story teller, always has been, and there are far to many to recount in one go. But on Christmas day she told me of the a time during the war when listening to the radio her family....my family... had inadvertently  caught the Nazi Propaganda by Lord Haw Haw. "This is Germany Calling...." In this particular broadcast by the traitorous Haw Haw our little village of Abercarn was mentioned, as was the Nazi plans to flatten said village due to its renowned tin works. It stunned me, as she said "obviously we were frightened but what could you do? You just had to carry on"

In a time when we are all subject to regular terrorist threats, and increased terror awareness, (especially after the November Paris Bombing) this really stuck with me. My lovely nana, this little old lady, who smells of talc and mint humbugs, had in her mid teens heard a threat to her home village from an evident and present danger. A promise to flatten her home by some of the most evil people to walk the earth. And what had they done when threatened with this promise of destruction? Carried on as normal. You see terrorism only works when you allow yourself to be terrorised. There is a reason my Nana is tough, there's a reason her generation won the war, when the chips were down, they knew how to be brave.

And if you're living life properly, there are times when you'll need to be brave too, and when that time comes just remember the traitorous Haw Haw and my Nan.

Remember to be brave.