When You and I were Young
Posted in Classical, Popular Song on Feb 6th, 2009 No Comments »
Today is my dear Grandmother’s birthday. She would have been 111 - born, officially, in 1898. But I don’t believe it. She lied about her age - because my Grandfather was born one year later - in 1899. She was worried about the difference in their ages but thought he’d live with one year’s difference, but not more. So he did, and they were married.
A while ago, I came across my Grandmother’s demob records, from when she was in the Land Army during the First World War. These records show that she was born, not in 1898, but in 1896. She must have thought that three years’ difference was too much for my Grandfather to accept - so she lied!
When we were celebrating her 80th birthday in 1978, she secretly knew it was her 82th.
Good for her!
When I was young and they both were old, we used to go to the pub on Saturday night, with the rest of the mob that was my family. My Grandmother would have a ‘Snowball’ - a disgusting drink made of Advocaat (egg yolk and brandy) and lemonade. My Grandfather would have a pint of beer, then a whisky, then several more. Towards the end of the evening, when the whole pub was juiced up and the piano player didn’t care what notes he hit, this was one of the songs that brought beery tears to the eyes of the whole company - Grandmother and Grandfather too.
Here it is - two songs for the price of one - ‘When you and I were young, Maggie’ and ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold’ -beautifully sung by Stuart Burrows.
