"Shit my nan says".....Life and Grandmothers: Overheard

“Aww, I love Michael McIntyre; his Chinese ways and his floppy hair.”
-Customers at the casino

“How did I know you were Italian? Nar, it wasn’t the accent mate, I’m shit with accents. It’s them proper shiny Gucci trainers. Even though you’re in a waiters t-shirt and cheap nylon trousers cleaning tables, you’re still wearing them. And they ain’t fake.
-Two waiters from work.

“Right, listen everybody, put down your knives and forks. I’ve lost a curtain.”
-My mother in the middle of dinner.

“Whose penis are they eating now?”
-My grandmother, watching ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’


My grandmother had come to stay for 6 weeks, I had come home for a indefinite -albeit short- period. What resulted was 5 people in a 3 bedroom house. There are a few ways in which as a family, we dealt with this:
A. We yelled. A lot.
B. We fought over the milk in the mornings and accused the gym-obsessed rugby playing member of the family of eating everything in the house. (Which was usually an accurate assumption.)
C. I wrote it all down in the hope that one day my anguish would translate to good writing material to pay for the therapy I’d need as a result of all of the above.

Every time my grandmother said something odd or funny I’d write it down, and even though my notepad is usually attached to me, there ended up being a white envelop that popped up around the house with scribbled quotes, until she found it. There was an awkward pause when I saw her pick it up, but thankfully she laughed in delight at the thought I actually wanted to write about her. I don’t think she realizes how interesting she is.

Anyone read- 'Shit My Dad Says' by Justin Halpern? It's one of those book that makes you look like a person on day release from an asylum as your laughing hysterically at the pages. It's one of the funniest things I have ever read and can't recomend it enough. In an nutshell, its just shit his dad's says, and here is my offering in response- "Shit my nan says"...


Grandmother: “Your brother’s French teacher is awful- I read a paragraph of his exercise book she’d written out for him… (Dramatic pause whilst shaking her head.) It was crap.
My brother: What? That bit? (He points to his open French book.)
Grandmother: Yes, Crap.
My brother: I wrote that. That’s my work.

“I wouldn’t swap you for anything but I don’t speak ‘Essex’ and I wish you wouldn’t either.”

“Now listen, This is good advice when you old- be careful, because you slip over, and break your leg and your hip, and then you end up in hospital, and then you’re dead and all of that, so you need to be careful.”

“Well, we’re not in Marks and Sparks now are we… It’s like a jungle in here!”
- Primark, Romford.

“Oooh what have you got there…?”
-Her love of pudding gives me a window into her younger self- her face lights up, eyes sparkle at the mention of pudding (vanilla ce-cream in particular) eye brows raised and mouth into a circle, innocently asking if there is possible any for grandmothers too.

“Everyone, can we take a minute, to discuss, what we’re having for dinner.”
-It was 10am.
Dinner was usually whatever my brother wanted to cook us that usually came out of the deep freeze. For me dinner meant cereal if no one offered to cook me anything.
I. don’t. do. cooking.

She'd get quite exasperated with me because not only do I not cook, I don’t know where anything lives in my mother’s house. “Ok, where does the tea towels/frying pan/coffee pot live?” –is merely received with a shrug. I just don’t know. This isn’t just because I never stay here long enough to learn, but also the intrinsic fact about me; I do not cook. I don’t get it. When I’m hungry I’m hungry. The thought of having to coordinate ovens and pots and pans and wash up afterwards- Jesus, what’s wrong with cereal and toast for three meals a day?
(This was my philosophy at uni, and don’t see why graduating has to affect this policy.)


“Your mother said she’s going to call around 10am but I need to have my shower, so I’m going to take the phone into the bathroom with me.”
-So the phone rings. And I her yell, “I’m coming!” at the ringing phone (why do we do that??) I have this vision of her slipping and falling as bath tubs take strategic manoevering when your eight-two with a knee that doesn’t want to cooperate with the rest of you. By the time I hear the splashing stop, the phone’s not ringing anymore.
Three times I hear it ring and three times I hear my beloved grandmother splashing about missing the call. I’m not quite sure how I can help this situation when a screeching beeping begins, sounding suspiciously like a fire alarm.

Right. So I’m standing on the landing but the problem is I haven’t lived I this house that long and there’s something not right with this alarm- I can’t tell where the noise is coming from. I stand underneath the thing trying to aim my ear upwards, wasting valuable seconds of escape time if there indeed a fire raging somewhere downstairs. Did she leave something on? (Note how I immediately presume it’s my grandmother’s fault- not me, the domestic goddess…)
How do I get a grandmother out of the bath and out of the house when I can’t even work out where/if there is a fire?? I couldn’t smell anything. Shit, was it that other type of alarm about that gas that you can’t see or smell?? By the time I work out I’m talking bollocks the bathroom door opens and my grandmother thrusts the phone at me in a panic. She’s left it off the hook. Hense the alarm-sounding, panic inducing- screech.

Panic over.


This woman travelled around India at the age of 65, speaks French , plays the piano like concert pianist frequently leaving us all speechless, went to medical school at kings college London and was a doctor… the list goes on. I think she thinks of herself as dotty, or as she told me, ‘past her sell by date’ and I have to remind her- the old lady act isn’t her, it’s just a by-product of an annoying thing called ‘age.’

She gave me this poem when I was so lost I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face, and although between us we now don’t have the author or its origin (typical of us two) there are no words more perfectly placed or perfectly true:


Don’t surrender
You’re loneliness so quickly
Let it cut more
Deep

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice so tender

My need of god
absolutely
clear.


Suffering doesn’t damage or ruin you- its ‘ferments and seasons’ you; altering you in a way that is completely new. Those processes may be irreversible- wine can never be grapes again, but wine’s not a bad thing. I guess it’s a more tender way of saying that even though you’re not the same, and can never be the same, nothing has been lost in the process of suffering, rather- something is gained.
Some say that people who find ‘God’ -in whatever context that may be- in an hour of need, makes the discovery insincere, but sometimes you can’t see something unless your sight line is altered. You simply weren’t standing in the right place before to make such a discovery.


“There’s tenderness in everybody, but not everybody can find it through words, sometimes its actions that speak tenderness.”
-She tells me of how her son in law planted snow bells outside her room when she was ill for a long time, planted them so she could see them through the window from her bed. He was a gardener, and this simple act brought a little light that she still remembers nearly thirty years later.

And finally…

“I thought I should tell you, I’ve found a leak in the bedroom. It’s coming from the ceiling- I was sitting on my bed and there was a drip drip onto my lap.”
-Grandmother was pleased at her helpful detective skills and the next twenty minutes was spent staring at a white ceiling, waiting for water to come gushing forth.
“Oh. Hang on, I think it may have been my nose. Yes, sorry, my nose was leaking.”

Tissue please.