Family life

Readers' favourite photographs, songs and recipesSnapshot: Nan Scotcher modelling a colanderThis is the nan I never met sitting with a colander on her head. Her name was Ann Scotcher, it's one of the few photos I have of her, and I love it. The picture was taken by my mum, aged 16, in the late 1950s, both sharing a lighter moment. But things weren't so easy for my nan. Widowed and in a loveless marriage (her first husband and father of her two young children had died young), her life was hard. Welfare as we know it today did not exist, so, like a lot of women in her predicament, she married again in order to survive.One day she opened her door to a young man selling bread. He charmed her and, in time, she decided to run away with him, leaving the second husband and, much harder, leaving

Read more ...