It’s hard to believe that my grandmother, Nan, died 30 years ago today. It’s seems like yesterday.

She was the perfect grandmother (and great grandmother) – a deeply caring person who loved the company of the younger generations. We in turn were thrilled to spend time with someone born during the reign of Queen Victoria, years before the first aeroplane flew.

I loved listening to her stories, which went back to the 1890s, including her memories of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897. More poignantly, Nan recalled fetching oxygen cylinders by hansom cab for her dying father in 1912. That was the year she turned 21, just days after the Titanic sank. Her life milestones seemed to coincide with historic events: Nan got married in 1919, the week Alcock and Brown became the first people to fly across the Atlantic, landing in a bog in Ireland. She herself took her only flight at the age of 92 in 1983 – the short hop from Cardiff to Bristol.

Nan delighted in telling me how her husband Frank, the grandfather I never knew, insisted that one day there would be radio with pictures. Frank almost certainly never saw his prediction come true as television, unless he happened to come across a rare demonstration set in a London store before the outbreak of war in 1939, when the BBC’s fledgling TV service closed for the duration.

Nan is the only person I’ve known who lived to 100. Her centenary party in Cardiff in 1991 was a marvellous celebration of a special person, with everyone who loved her crowding the capital’s County Hall.

I had completely forgotten that Dad and I gave a slide show at the party, showing significant places in Nan’s life. After Dad died, I found amongst his papers my speaking notes linking the images.

Nan enjoyed two further birthdays, and I cherish the thank you note she sent me after her last (102nd) birthday party in 1993.

If you think of the Victorians as sombre people, these photos of Nan should put you right. On the left, you can see her thoroughly enjoying her centenary birthday in April 1991. The other photo was taken at one of her ninetysomething birthdays in the late 1980s. These anniversary events were always a highlight of the family year, with everyone getting together, either in one of her children’s homes or at a Welsh pub or restaurant. Our favourite venue was the Little West, on the coast at Southerndown, near Bridgend. (I always think of Nan when I drive past the building.) The first time I ever drove on a motorway was the 150 mile trek down the M4 to Wales for Nan’s 99th birthday party in 1990.

Back in the 1940s, none of her family could have imagined she would live into her second century. She was widowed at 51 in 1942 during a time when she was herself dangerously ill. But the crisis passed, and it was only in her final years that a sense of mortality returned. The photo above is the last I took of her, over the 1993 Christmas holidays. Despiite her gentle smile, I sense that she realised that her long life was drawing to a close. On my last very visit to her in February 1994 I talked to her about my plans to cycle to the Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog), and helped her sip from a glass of water. My aunt, Dorothy, who had cared for Nan devotedly for 50 years, praised my nursing skills. But I was simply taking pleasure from looking after my beloved grandmother. I sensed it would be the last time I saw her, and so it proved.

I only knew Nan as an old person. But everyone was young once, dreaming of a lifetime of possibilities. So here’s Nan as a young woman in Cardiff in the early years of the 20th century. It’s a nice way to think of her 30 years on, and almost 134 years after she was born.