Memories of Little Grandad

HeartFreek's July Challenge for today is "Older than you". Looking around for inspiration fitting round the working day I realised how few things around me have "a story" and are older than myself. Its not that I'm old (though sometimes I feel like it), but I live in a 1970s built house on a modern housing estate and work in one of those towns whose heart was ripped out in the 1960s and 70s to build a modern concrete jungle :((

I have very few things which I have inherited or acquired as such, but remembered a few practical objects from my Little Grandad, all 4' 10" of him.

He was a carpenter by trade and ran a company with his brother in the 1920s which specialised in making hand-built radio cabinets, which were elegant pieces furniture in their own right. The photo shows him in his workshop using a saw, probably sometime in the 1970s. He taught me basic woodworking in this workshop, and the saw is one of his which Dad gave me when I set up house. I think the one in the photo is still among the tools Dad inherited, and which we kept when clearing out Dad's workshop a few years ago after his death.

The watering can is a reminder that Grandad loved gardening, and was virtually self-sufficient for fruit and veg up until he died at 83. This one probably came from the hardware store he ran with Granny from the mid-1930s until he retired. Again, this found its way to Dad and then to me when it got too heavy for either Mum or Dad to use (it holds 3 gallons or 13.6 litres).