When I was 22 I met the Queen, she was a nice old lady who
reminded me of my grandmother, my Nain.
My Nain (Grandmother in North Wales Welsh) is the same age
as the queen, but their lies the only true similarity; their lives couldn’t
have been more different. Far from being born into wealth, pomp and ceremony,
my Nain was born and bred in a Welsh mining village where, up until a few years
ago, she lived for most of her life.
I’m not too sure of all the minutiae of her life, but of
what I do know it seems that she hasn’t half had an interesting one. The eldest
of two girls, when she turned 14 she was shipped off to Liverpool for a life of
service. She contracted TB in her early twenties and consequently lived away in
a TB Hospital for a year or two whilst she recovered. Whilst she was there she was courting a local
collier. They married and had four children, three boys (the eldest is my
father) and one girl, the youngest. During the war she went to work in the
local munitions factory. She was tragically widowed when my Aunt turned nine
years old. She is now in the throes of
dementia.
These are the facts of her life. This is her story. But what
I am supposed to be writing about is my idea of my grandmother, my story, and
this picture has a different focus.
What I will always remember about my Nain is the rhythm of
her TB scared breathing when she read me a bedtime story. Taking Dairylea
sandwich and Ribena carton picnics with her in the local park. Her not-so-secret
secret wind breaking in the kitchen. The
endless supply of Rich tea and Blue Ribbon biscuits. Beef dripping fried chips
served up in greaseproof paper cones. Her bara brith. Being walked to school
and receiving advice that if a man tries to attack me to kick him in the
goolies. The agony of her rubbing sand from in between my toes on holiday. Her
kiss goodnight when she tucked me into bed - “nos da cockles y byd”.
My Nain means a lot to me, I named my daughter after her. It
is sad to see her fade, but I will always have these wonderful memories, as
painful as they are to recall at present.
Katie:
It was Simon’s birthday last week and I agreed to make him some cakes, if he hadn’t taken cakes into work the rumour is you get thrown into the pool. I suspect that somebody who doesn’t work here any more started this but tradition has stuck and I made the cakes. I’m managed a pink velvet layer cake with the addition of strawberries and some macaroons. My Gran taught me how to make macaroons, well she taught me how to make coconut flatties, which are coconut macaroons gone a little bit wrong and yes… mine went wrong, coconut flatties it was!
My Gran passed away when I was 17, she was and still is my favourite person; I always suspected that I was her favourite too. For no reason other than I was her youngest grandchild.
If I was off ill from school I would go to Gran’s house, my Mum was hard to trick; if we complained that we were ill, or that we were dying she would say ‘Oh go and die in the bathroom, it’ll be easier to clean up.’ She was always joking but it meant that it was really hard to get to spend a day at Gran’s house. Gran was sympathetic and would let me sleep on the sofa, or play on my cousin’s Nintendo; Gran was surprisingly good at Street Fighter. During the school holidays we would go there and learn to make scones, or coconut flatties. She played card games with us, Rummy, New Market and taught us games to pass the time like Solitaire, Round the Clock and 11s. She taught me how to knit and how to cross-stitch and she always had bits of cotton or wool hanging from her elbows from her current project. After she died when we cleared out her things we found a tin of half finished cross-stitches, one was a Border Collie puppy and one said ‘Kat’. I’ve still got that tin exactly as it was.
Gran and Grandad had a vegetable patch, Grandad would tend to it and Gran would cook it. We would go out into the garden and pick broad beans, sliding open the silky pockets with our thumbs and popping each bean into a bucket for tea, well apart from one or two beans, we would always eat a few fresh and crunchy from the pod. I grow vegetables now, I always make sure I plant beans and they hardly ever make it into the pot!
The thing I remember the most is the texture of her skin, soft without shape, the most comfortable place was resting my head on her arm. We would go to visit every Friday night and I’d nestle in next to her, even when I was a teenager, I’d pick the cotton from her arm and twist it around my fingers while everyone else talked and told stories. After about twenty minutes she would ask me to retrieve a silver parcel from on top of the radiator. Warm sausage rolls wrapped up in foil to be put on the table. Sometimes Grandad would get in trouble; he’d say the wrong thing and Gran would give him a swift kick to the shin to shut him up. She loved him though.
Even though she died over ten years ago I still think of her almost everyday, something she taught me will crop up, like baking, or when I’m tending to the vegetables or stitching up a hole in an item of clothing. Even some of my favorite books are ones that I stole from her bookshelf. She will never stop having an effect on me and I’ll never stop learning from her and I’m not the only one… The cakes were a success! I had three recipe requests, even for the coconut flatties!
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| Gran by Katie |
