Granny was driving me down South for the funeral. I got the train down to hers first, and was delighted by the little house she has with her partner. She lives near a nursery school, and I said, I don’t think I could cope with that kind of noise. But to her, children playing is the most natural thing in the world: tiny humans learning about what it means to be a person, to feel things, to interact with other people who might be the same as you and might like dinosaurs and Spiderman too (or in my day, dinosaurs and Bananaman).
I can remember the first house that my Granny used to have. It was long enough for us to race up and down at Christmas, playing a drawing game in two competing teams. I remember how silly and fun my uncles were, playing that, tumbling over each other, inherently knowing their own limits.
I remember the lovely smell of her home, and the bizarre and fascinating artifacts that she’d collected with her husband, from places that may as well be other planets. The strange thermometer thing, which I could never work out the purpose of, despite thinking about it so much. The old wall-mounted rotary phone, that Granny answered with her phone number and a wonderful sing-song voice that I liked more than my own “hello who is it?“. And the hand-made wooden thing on the wall that would slide around the names of her family members, to show who’s home.
Everything felt very grown up, but safe. Bed with tucked in corners that I remember from when Mum was in the place that smelled like a hospital and had a hammock. Glow Worm night light that I was always thankful for. Sofa bed maybe with my brothers… And the baked beans on toast that was also a clock, but looked like the real thing, and felt more like my Granny than the other ornaments: practical, but warm and silly.
I remember my mug, it had bears on it and I would have blackcurrant squash, among the same cupboards with the pots and pans that I could still recall, very faintly, having so much fun bashing on, when I was still young enough for that to be utterly captivating, the urge to bash again still in me whenever I saw them.
I still drink juice from mugs now. It’s not always been that way, but since I sliced my hand open trying to wash a glass that didn’t fit, blood pouring endlessly into the mixing bowl I carried to A&E, grisly stitch job from a junior doctor and needles I’ve always hated, since then I’ve gone back to mugs.
It’s strange, looking back at Granny’s old house. The summers in the lavender-lined garden and the bees that flocked around them, how it feels like they stretched on forever. Isn’t it funny how those days can feel like a lifetime?