Readers may have noticed that more and more often these posts veer towards family history. It is in the hope that these snippets may be the way to let my American grandson, growing up in the New World, know something about the Old World: the world of East European Jewish peasant stock, to which the other side of his family belongs.
It was seeing two astronauts turning somersaults in what looked like a washing machine which brought to mind a pet hate of my father’s – generally such a cheerful soul, never happier than at a rugby match, down a mine, or anywhere with my mother at his side . . .
Very different from his three younger brothers who all inherited not my Grodzinsky grandfather’s happy optimism but my Hoff grandmother’s business brain and headed for South Africa, where they put it to good use among the gold fields.
Below, my grandfather and his four sons:
But, back to my father’s pet hate: what was it that so annoyed him about the Johnny Burke classic which I would hear on the radio throughout my childhood, sung by all the great crooners.
Carry moonbeams home in a jar
Or would you rather be . . .”
I think it was probably that these light, romantic songs, often with ironic lyrics – had replaced his beloved, unsubtle music-hall free-for-alls.
The wonderfully robust Knees Up, Mother Brown was one of these. I remember its being sung by the crowd celebrating V.E. Day on the forecourt of the local pub. I only wish I could remember the words of the one which was my father’s favourite of all with its gloriously plangent refrain:
“Remember that a cabbage has a heart . . .”
