I'm here in Swansea to try and understand more about the little family in this photograph taken here in Swansea in 1922. This is my Dad, George Rea, his baby brother Thomas and my Nana, Mildred. She was known by her family as Cissie, a name given to her by her brother which stuck maybe because her mother was called Millie as a shortened version of Amelia.
I have come here to try and figure out why they were living here in Swansea when my Dad had been born in Lambeth, why was there such a big gap between the children, what their father Tom Rea was up to and why they suddenly uprooted and returned to London in 1926. This sudden move meant my Dad had to forfeit his scholarship place at a grammar school and register at the local board school. For a bespectacled boy with a Welsh accent, it must have been a traumatic experience. I recall him telling me that he hated his London school, that if he was reprimanded he would respond with a nervous smile that resulted in a beating. The move had such a disastrous impact on his education that it took him a whole lifetime of nightschool and correspondence courses to make up the loss. But determined he was, and he eventually provided for his family a nice semi-detached home in Wimbledon of a type that he must have set his sights on here in the Uplands of Swansea on his route to and home from school. When he died it was with the confidence that his wife would be "alright", unlike the desperate straights his own mother was in when her husband checked out early. He had done all he could to give his children the best chance but one by one we all rebelled as children do. Or was it more? What characteristics did we inherit from our grandparents - from Tom and Cissie Rea?
The Swansea days undoubtedly shaped Dad's aspirations which in turn left a trace on mine so by returning here, and in trying to understand the grandmother I never met and redeem my black sheep grandfather, maybe I will learn more about the mystery of myself.
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