When gardening today, I was wandering round the garden with a bucket and remembered a story which dates back to the early 1970s.  

My widowed grandmother became ill and she didn't want to live in her great big house any more, miles away from her three daughters. 

She decided that she'd like to come and leave near her eldest daughter, in Cornwall - presumably because it was much warmer than nearer the other daughters - in Manchester and in Edinburgh.

She found a lovely bungalow in Saltash which, although in the next street, happened to be at the bottom of my parents' garden.  This was very convenient, my father ran a line down the garden so Grandma could talk to the family whenever she needed.  

Considering she wasn't in the best of health and had been transplanted from her native Yorkshire, where she'd lived for the best part of 80 years, she settled in very well.  

She had a cleaner, also fish and other food items were delivered in those days by a man coming round in his van once a week and all the housewives used to look forward to them coming.

The bungalow must have seemed very small to her, having lived in an enormous farmhouse and then retired to a very big house in Scarborough.

Anyway, to go back to the bucket.

One day my father appeared carrying a bucket (just like me) and my Grandma said: 'Oh, have you come to drown the kittens?'.  

That would seem a very strange thing to hear today.  But if we go back to my Grandma living on the farm, there were always lots of 'outside' cats (often feral), the ones who caught the mice and the rats.  Unfortunately it wasn't easy to catch them and have them neutered.  So a man used to come round regularly and dispatch any unwanted moggies.

These days we'd probably be reported to the RSPCA - but in those days it was perfectly legal (see: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101029071148AAJynZB).