The past remains.
The other day on Bookface, one of those questions came up. "If you are lucky enough to remember your Grandma, tell us.
So I did, and it has stayed with me for days.
My grandma, was exactly 40 years older than me. My mum is exactly 20 years older than me, being one of ten children that my grandma had. My youngest aunt is just a little older than me. So there I was, the littlest, tagged onto the end of a long line of kids that my grandma took into her heart. She died when I was ten, and I dont have a huge load of memories before this time, but those that I do have feature her predominantly. What do I remember?
Her smell which was cuticura talc. The feeling of being loved completely. Candlewick bedspreads, watching wheel tappers and shunters club and the wrestling on Saturday nights. Podding peas. Rag rug by the open fire. Tagging along while she went cleaning at a posh house. Bags of sweet peanuts, boxes of jellied fruits and Weekend chocolates. Sunday coach trips to stately homes and safari parks with pack ups of chicken drumsticks in tin foil. Jam sandwiches. Long fleecy nighties. Hat boxes in a cupboard over the telly. Spinning round in circles on her patterned carpet until I made it all into swirly circles. Bingo. Fish and chips and cups of tea.
I still smell her sometimes, which is really strange, but always reassuring. I still love long fleecy nighties, and when I am sad, or poorly, I will wear one myself, for comfort. Candlewick bedspreads are rare now, but I still like them. I bought a weighted blanket last year and it replicates the feeling I had when I stayed at grandmas, my bed weighed down with blankets and coats - the house was made of wood (and painted pink), and in the winter it was freezing. Lovely and warm tucked in there with my Narnia book and a hot water bottle. In the morning I would always sneak into grandma and grandads bed, her side with little pots of avon perfume creams, his side with an ashtray in the shape of a skull and the inscription "poor uncle Fred, he smoked in bed". Funny. Sometimes Grandad would send me to the Beehive sweetshop to buy half an ounce of Old Holborn, and if there was any change I could buy some sweets. I used to pray all the way there that there would be change - of course there always was.
There was a room with an open fire, and a TV in the corner, and we would watch television in the evening with jam sandwiches on a card table. Remember being scandalised when the Wheeltappers and Shunters comedy/variety show had a stripper on one evening. My god, she was mortified. She preferred the wrestling, we would sit with our jellied fruits and she would shout at the television. Big Daddy. Giant Haystacks.
We used to go on these bus trips, a coach would pick us up in front of the bank, and we would sit together, grandmas with a shopping bag full of goodies on her knee. Bags of sweet peanuts and coconut mushrooms from the Beehive. Chicken legs wrapped in tinfoil. I never knew where we were going, it was a big secret. Once, we ended up at Alton Towers, before it was a theme park. It was garden upon garden, filled with lakes and fountains. We sat down on a bench for a rest, and grandma told me that the man on the next bench was Willy Rushton, a famous cartoonist and satirist (and co-founder of Private Eye) in the seventies. A goose walked up and pecked her cigarette out of her hand. She screamed, but Willy (or wasn't he) and I laughed, me till I was near vomiting.
She used to get the bus 15 miles to see us - we used to walk onto the beach. Once, she spread suntan lotion on her to stop herself burning - except once, she didn't, it was fake tan. So funny. Other times, mum would put me on the bus by myself to be picked up by her at the other end. Then we would go to the fish and chip shop where her friend Aggie worked in the café. Checked plastic tablecloths and hot chips. Best ever. And scraps! Always, hot, vinegary scraps.
We used to go to bingo at the old converted theatre in town. Once, I couldn't go because I was sick, and I threw such a tantrum that my mum told me off. I hid behind our long curtains in shame, but I heard Grandma - "leave her be, she's a good girl". Thanks Grandma for your unconditional love, and for having my back.
So, it is 46 years since she died, almost to the day. I still miss her, and cannot comprehend how my mum felt at 30 to no longer have this warm, loving mother.
