Last week my cousin sent me this photo that she’d found.  It’s my Nanny and Grandad, my Aunt (right) and Mum (left).

Don’t they all look amazing?!

I love old photos.  I love the little insights they give you into another time.  And of course the ones connected to my family personally are especially interesting to me.

But regardless of whether I know the people or not, one thing I find fascinating is how people seemed to have aged so much faster in previous generations.  And I know it’s because they had things like World Wars and dropping bombs and rations and all sorts of now unimaginable hardships to contend with, but it still holds my attention.

So my first thought on seeing the photo was ‘How old would Mum have been?’ (The family consensus via Facebook messenger was around 6), and then ‘How old would Nanny and Grandad have been?’

It turned out to be rather more complex than I’d thought.  Mum obviously isn’t able to help.  Dad was a bit flummoxed, and we don’t actually know my grandparents dates of birth.

But I do have some family certificates and a rummage around gave me their marriage certificate  – married in 1937 when Nanny was 21 and Grandad was 27, making their years of birth 1916 and 1910.  (Grandads death certificate gives his year of birth as 1908, but what’s a couple of years between friends?).

So by my calculations, if Mum was 6 and her sister was 12 in this photo, that makes Nanny 31 and Grandad 37.

This is a photo of me and Mr R at the races on his birthday last year, (the most recent one that’s not just head and shoulders and the only one looking as smart as Nanny and Grandad) making him 49 and me 47.  I can’t quite get my head around the fact we’re over 12 years older than Nanny and Granddad above. 

Life must have been so different back then, mustn’t it? 🙂💜