Hamilton’s message to Alan Warren 2008

Hey Alan Our mutual cousin, Janet Warren/Reinhardt, has drawn me a picture of you as a serious historical researcher which means I have to put aside my memory of you as a tiny boy cousin running ahead of us across the common at Hogsmill Way, for a moment, and thank you for having a look for my mother as a sixteen year old girl in her first job, in , of all places, a toy shop.

It was a piece of our history that only came to me recently, and have never been mentioned in all the stories about her. And it arrived at a moment when I was helping to prepare the story of our business, which incorporates a large toy shop, for our new web site.

It is very much a work in progress, as you will see if you click on the link below. The other link is to our brand new eBay store, which is working well, so far.

Anyway, it all seemed very Warren, and mysterious, odd, and timely since Janet was off to England, and there were you, also historically minded.

As a side bar to all that, alongside the stories of Grandfather Warren’s desperate exploits bypassing the gas meter with a rubber hose, are my memories of a well off, respectable “Jampi” in the nice house in St.Philips Avenue, with second wife “Dinger” Belle, an engineer at British Salmson, rumoured to be a part time bookmaker, an inventor, a man of substance.

How did he get there from wherever he was?

And Grandmother, living above a shop in Cheam, with Woodall, my mother’s jailbird boyfriend. And the odd nick names most of the children had, but not all of them. “Biddy” Iris, “Sonny” Thomas, “Blue” Violet, “Poppy” Phyllis, “Budge” Beryl … but Dennis, Trevor and Ronald. And if Farnborough and Aldershot are indeed a likely location, it draws a rambling line back to Guildford, where Iris was a junior trainee florist, and Bookham, where “Sonny” encouraged Dennis to ride a brakeless bicycle down the steep hill, with predictably hilarious , if painful, consequences.

And so, before my rambling line comes to an equally calamitous conclusion, I will cease, desist and talk to you later…