Frank was a barber and my grandma Joan was a hairdresser, who moved from London to Rugby and then settled in Cambridge. The worked together in their own shop on Mill Road, and it was above it that my mother and my two older sisters were born. I remember visiting them often at the salon and sitting in the back room eating my lunch, which always seemed to be a boiled egg. I can still recall the burst linoleum ,the almost overpowering smell of hairdresser s chemicals, the barber s shop was at the front and the ladies' salon at the back. They was always barber's banter and customers would try to talk to me, but I mistrusted strangers and was not interested, much to my grandpa's disgust. Frank was a conscientious objector in the second world war and was sent to Bedford prison, Later, he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp for hard labor, and to guard the prisoners. He made good friends with some of the Italians and after war they visited each other for many years until they all became too old to travel. Grandma was a fantastic cook and picked up a lot of Italian cookery tips on her visits. She could make a delicious meal from basic materials and was a very inventive person, who recycled long before it was fashionable. That generation lived through hard times and two world wars. They were resourceful through necessity, making use and re-using whatever they could. Although my grandfather was a  _ man who could be quite difficult sometimes, they were devoted to each other and spent many happy years together. My grandma had a heavy stroke in her 90s and was never the same again, as though part of her brain had been switched off. She tried hard to carry on with her cooking, sewing and knitting etc, but it became too much of a challenge. She died a few years later in 1998, and it broke Frank's heart. Exactly a year later, Frank died, aged 91. The nurse who was with him when he died said his last words were: "I'm coming. Joan." The old couple gradually formed the habit of  _  .
travelling around the world cooking delicious meals making various friends living an economic life