My grandparents definitely would not be impressed by the world right now.
My maternal great-grandad had his nose shot off during the first world war. My great-grandma would often tell us about it and how he had rhinoplasty – one of the first in the country. Both my paternal grandparents served during the second world war. My gramps was a royal marine engineer (and so was his father) and my nan drove ammunition trucks for the army. They both joined at 18.
I think about my gramps often. He was very much an important figure in my life growing up and I still miss him terribly even though it has been over a decade since he died and even longer since the Alzheimer’s set in.
We both had insomnia and were often up late together drinking tea long past when everyone else had gone to bed. We often spoke, and he would happily tell me about his parents, but never spoke about the war. He was station in Orkney for some it, but I know he’d been in France at some point. He mentioned being there, but nothing more. We spoke about other things, but a lot of the time, we just sat together quietly. Drinking tea, playing cards, reading, writing. He liked brass band music, and we got him some headphones one year so he could listen to his bands without disturbing my nan who would watch telly in the front room.
He was generous with his time, though his relationship with his sons was contentious over the years, he clearly favoured the girls in the family. He was my main carer when I was staying with my dad, and one of my positive male role models growing up. I don’t have a bad word to say about him, and to be honest, for all his faults, I don’t think even my dad does. After all their fallings out over the years, my dad still went to visit him every Wednesday in the care home without fail for the entire time he was there. My mum and her sisters loved him to bits and even long after my parents divorced my aunts would come to see him, and even take him out.
He was firm but fair, I think most of us who knew him, would say. He had his limits, definitely, but I’m only ever left with good memories about him.
I think most of us would agree than he wouldn’t really be impressed with the world at the moment.
My gramps never really knew the adult me. The person I am today. He never got to meet my wife, who I know he would’ve loved. They have a lot in common and I know my grandad wouldn’t care that I’m bisexual. Or non-binary. That my hair is blue (at the moment). That my kid is different gender at the moment. He would only care that I’m me. That I’m happy. He wouldn’t care a tosh about your identity, only that you didn’t walk on is freshly moped floor. He cared that you were doing something with your life. He mostly wanted to drink his coffee, read his paper, and have someone tie his laces for him.
This isn’t the world he was sent to war to fight for. Thousands of people today will have had a two minute silence and in the same breath blaming refuges and immigrants for all their problems. The same people who took part in the riots over the summer will be wearing poppies all month. The same people who donate to idiots like Tommy Robinson and make nazi salutes are the same idiots who spout nationalist crap about how we won the world wars.
My grandad didn’t fight for these idiots to take over country after country with their far-right bullshit. Trump, Robinson, Farage, it’s all just nazi-lite propaganda that white cis-hets are loving because deep down they’re bigots. They’re being spoken to and they’re not disagreeing because our grandads have passed on and aren’t around to ask them what the hell they think they’re doing. They’re falling for it because they believe it, the believe the country would be better off without immigration, without black and brown people, without gay and trans kids. And they believe it because it’s easy. Because anything else is work and people are fundamentally lazy and/or selfish.
My gramps worked his entire life, from the army to a council job, and then when he retried he was still looking after his home, his garden and half the gardens in the street. He had time for people, for their lives and their differences.
Unfortunately, people like him have passed and we’re left with a generation of people who have learnt nothing from their parents and are unwilling to change or help.
Rights are not like pie. Me getting rights does not take anything away from anyone else, it just means I get a place at the table too. A place my gramps made for me – as long as you didn’t walk on his wet kitchen floor.
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