A surprise in the driveway

Writing the last post reminded me of another time when the past caused quite a surprise to some poor builder. The people that owned the house that backs on to my mother's decided to lay a new driveway and engaged a firm of builders to do the work. They set to with their digger to remove the old concrete drive but had to stop rather suddenly when they unearthed a hand grenade! The area was sealed off, the bomb disposal squad called and the offending item was eventually removed and disposed of. No one could explain how it got there except my mother who remembered that during the war the man who was living there at the time had brought the grenade home with him on leave from the army and had given it to his wife in case there was an invasion and she needed it to defend herself. (Quite what she would do with it I don't know, but I guess people were very scared) Fortunately, it was never needed but as it was obtained illegally the man didn't know quite what to do with it after the war ended. He told my grandfather that he eventually decided to bury it in his new drive. (My mother remembered this because she remembered my grandfather saying that it was a bl**dy stupid thing to do!)