Tell me you come from a long line of haberdashers without telling me you come from a long line of haberdashers.

Granny Branch and me, Waltham Way, Frinton On Sea, Essex, 1974. Dressed handmade by my mum, fabric provided (at a charge, no doubt) by Granny Joan Branch from her shop, Branch The Drapers on Connaught Avenue. A formidable, filter-free matriarch, shopkeeper and landlady who loved her picky M&S tea, I admired her fierceness even if that awe would sometimes turn to terror thanks to her sharp tongue. She suffered absolutely no fools. Never.

Every Xmas until my parents’ divorce in 1986, we would spend Boxing Day in her bungalow behind our house on Pole Barn Lane with our cousins, the Furness family and on this occasion the Prevost boys. We would consume vast quantities icing sugar enhanced whipped cream, M&S brandy snaps and Corona cherryade (no own labels for this Mrs Branch), whilst playing posh card games and racing wooden horses grandad Cyril (finally returned after his many years in the wilderness living with the other women Geraldine!) had created along on strings, the sparks of our festive outfits and the vast E numbers we’d consumed helping to speed up our attempts to cross the finishing line.

I survived the early polyester years relatively unscathed thanks to a mixture of her Margo-inspired 1970s fashion, generosity with the Fox’s glacier fruits and ability to tell my mum exactly how it was when we went round each week with the rent money. She was the first style icon in my life, and I will be forever grateful for the influence she had on me – something tells me my preference for a big pair of specs may be a generic thing. She was quite the nylon-draped wonder. I miss her grit. Oh, for one more chat in the back of her shop over the Vogue Pattern Books.

#tbt#granny#1970s#wildbloodandqueenie