Michael Selwood has added a follow-up to his comments about his Grandfather - Stephen Feather.

Reading through what I wrote I realise that I have done my grandfather some injustice. First and foremost he was very good with me, an excellent grandfather encouraging adventure as did my mother. After the catastrophic family upheaval of the war years I visited my grandparents in Cleveleys and he took me everywhere, to the quayside fish market in Fleetwood, a bustling fishing port as it then was, to the Blackpool funfair where he went on the hairy rides with me and made sure I saw everything, on long trips into the Lake district in his then Austin 7. It poured with rain the whole time I recall and we would stop for midday dinner in the best hotel in Keswick. He could well speak received English but I vividly recall he deliberately asked for nut brown ale in broad Lancashire, to the great annoyance of my grandmother. In those days they dressed up, the two women with furs and so on. There was family to visit in Clitheroe and the Trough of Bowland to introduce me as his grandson. I was desperately shy in those times due to my wartime experiences. And he eventually instructed my aunt that I was to inherit after her. Sadly his lawyer cheated him and made off with his wealth, house deeds and who knows what, leaving my poor aunt nearly destitute. The lawyer was struck off for having done this with well off clients seemingly as a matter of course through his work!

 

Then there was his obsession with his motorcycles, really powerful machines as one can see on that photograph. He took my mother out for spins and gave me very short slow rides in the village. Every year he had gone to the Isle of Man to report on the TT races and would ride the course on his machine, not as competitor I understand. And he took me to see it, my first sea trip in a ship as opposed to a boat, and to tour the island. On that tour we left the ladies in Douglas and went together to see the course. He was at all times generous, despite the occasional complaint.

 

It is indeed true that he was strict with family behaviour and in this way Rosalinde, always difficult with him and our mother, contravened. Eventually though they loved her so much that they wanted to adopt her, at which my aunt objected strenuously. What obsessed Rosalinde was unfortunate. She became subjected to family hatreds and unable to cope with them and shake them off, Hence her comments in the short piece in the book and her problems with me.

 

I think that when I wrote the pieces for you originally I was having a hard time and still trying to overcome severe ME, so had memory blockages, despite gaining my university doctorate.