This is my Grandad - Wilf. Today would have been his birthday. I meant to get some flowers for the house to mark the occasion, but forgot in all the hussle and bustle of Saturday shopping.
Grandma and Grandad had a corner shop in Lancashire. They honeymooned in Wales - riding a tandem pushbike, we have a photo somewhere of them posing on the bike. In later years they loved to visit Scotland and the Lake District (but by car).
One day Grandad came home with a cine camera - it was the latest model. Grandma scolded him for spending money on it. He said "I'm not saving up for an old age I may never have".
He got a lot of pleasure out of filming - family holidays, local characters who came in the shop, and days out to places like Chatsworth House. We have had some of the films put onto disc, it brings back so many memories. Building sandcastles on the beach in Anglesey, my baby sister sitting in her pram inside the shop - she's within arms reach of the apples and cheekily pinches one when she thinks no-one is looking. There's a little girl riding her 3 wheeled tricycle (me!), various weddings of friends and neighbours, and my auntie filmed by Lake Windermere in the 1960's.
A few years after he bought the cine camera Grandad was diagnosed with cancer, he died months later, aged 55.
Grandma carried on running the shop on her own until she retired. When she was over 80 years old she 'emigrated' to the Isle of Man - her family had come from there originally and she had fond memories of visiting cousins. She loved to go out and about on public transport, sometimes coming home hours later after doing circular tours of the Island by bus. She never tired of living there. It was her dream come true. She was very proud of her Manx heritage.
So - the moral is it's never too late to do something you really want to do, or too early.
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