My grandad was an artist, and made his regular money as a restorer for a local antique shop. They would get in some old battered wardrobe, sculpture, vase or whatever, and he would repair any broken or cracked bits, varnish it up, repaint any worn designs etc., and then the shop would sell it on. My dad remembers there being all sorts of weird things in the house; old battered signs, stuffed animals, busts of random people, one of those enormous wooden half-naked women they used to put on the front of ships (I forget what they’re called), even a creepy old ventriloquist’s dummy that I remember fairly well being brought out a couple of times to scare me and my sister. On the side he painted. I mean properly painted. https://imgur.com/a/U6DRn3R He sold a few pieces occasionally and a few years ago there was an exhibition put on at the local art gallery of some of his work. I don’t have an awful lot of memories of him tbh, despite knowing him until I was 11, but the ones I do have are mostly fond. The smell of his art room - lead paint for days and thick pipe smoke. Every day after lunch he would sit and watch a VHS of Bob Ross or someone and whilst me and my sister were allowed to watch if we wanted, we had to be silent while doing so, so we tended to come in near the end so that we could watch whichever VHSs we’d borrowed from the library earlier that day afterwards. He also had a great big bristly moustache that was irritating when he kissed me. He had warm eyes. Every time we had Sunday lunch around his and my nan’s house, he would play This is The Moody Blues - the best of album. He was a big fan, and I cannot listen to anything by them without feeling the most incredible wave of nostalgia. The only other albums that were ever played were The Rat Pack at Christmas (which was played - you guessed it - at Christmas), and this compilation of French pop from the 40s and 50s. When he died in 2004, I got to pick out some of his stuff as is the family custom. I got a flat cap (dunno where that’s gone tbh, back of a wardrobe somewhere I guess), a blue silk handkerchief with his initials on (I have no idea why I chose that), a military baton (bound in leather and great for whacking my sister) and a scarf. https://imgur.com/a/Ab3oIe2 It’s not a very thick scarf but it’s well made and bright red. I don’t know when he bought it exactly but the shop he bought it from closed down in the early 90s, so we’re talking a good 30+ years. It hasn’t gotten dirty enough for me to need to wash it, so it still smells faintly smokey even 20-odd years later. He got lung cancer, and then it spread and he developed a brain tumour, and was wheelchair-bound for a long time. He hated going outside in his chair, so he wouldn’t go out at all. He would often hallucinate that someone with a knife was trying to attack him in bed. Don’t smoke kiddos.