Grannies

Lucy’s column for Feb 24
Granlo…1
Indulge me a bit while I talk about grannies in general, and those close to me in particular.
I was fortunate enough to have three grandmas. My father, who died when I was six, was outlived by a few years by his mother. Memories are a bit vague but those I have are positive – a tiny woman, as broad as she was long, dressed permanently in black, with wispy silver hair worn in a bun, and which, let loose at bed-time, made her look a bit witch-like and scary.
I didn’t like her cottage home at the top of Matlock. It was as dark and gloomy as she always appeared in my childhood imagination. I must have loved her because I loved everybody, but it bordered on the cupboard variety. It was there she indulged me with tea-time treats of bread and sugar, bread and condensed milk, bread and brown sauce. It was years later that I realised she must have been one feisty woman in her younger days.
She’d met my grandfather in India in the 1890s, where she worked as a nanny, and he was an Army regular. They had three sons, and only a year after my dad, the youngest, was born, he was killed by a cricket ball to the head during a game. She had to sail home alone, with her three little boys, to what? Poverty and permanent widowhood. Little wonder that she always looked as if life had dealt her a bitter blow.
When my mother re-married, she brought not just a wonderful step-father into my life, but a new set of grandparents who, compared with us, were middle-class in that they owned their own home, had a biscuit barrel on the sideboard, sipped a noonday glass of sherry, and were always laughing. Step-granny could still touch her toes, do handstands, and nip up Bank Road, Matlock, like a good un until she was pushing 80.
But out-and-out favourite was maternal grandmother Pursglove, little Nell as she was known, who lived at Two Dales. She, too, always looked worried, and never appeared to sit down. When she wasn’t baking or cooking for a constant flow of visitors – she had six children and 18 grandchildren, all who gathered there regularly – she would walk the two miles, twice a day, in all weathers, to let out and fasten up her hens, housed in a field atop the steep Sydnop Hill.
As kids we could always go to the homes of these grandmothers and be kissed, cuddled, criticised, read to, moaned at, played with, on the receiving end of individual attention our mothers sometimes didn’t have the time to give. From grandmas, we learned to knit, sew, bake, recite poetry, values and morals, and shared secrets and dreams. A generation on, my own mother proved such a granny. She gave up her retirement to look after my two sons while this (then) single mother worked to earn a crust, and had tremendous influence on six grandsons and two granddaughters.
When we get together, we may laugh at their foibles and funny ways, but we are all aware of the influence grandparents have on our lives. Which is why hearts nation-wide go out to the Edinburgh couple whose grandchildren are in the throes of being snatched away from their care, and into adoption, as the authorities consider them too old – 59 and 46, come on – to raise them.
In a couple of weeks, this grandma becomes a septuagenarian, with my cousins, some travelling from far-flung parts, joining other family members and dear friends and colleagues for a creaky knees-up at the Littleover Lodge Restaurant. Overseeing this shindig are receptionist and party organiser-in-chief Wendy Bagshaw, and catering director Antonello Pitzettu. The family-minded Italians have a proverb : "If nothing is going well, call your grandmother." We may not be able to call them, but grandmothers everywhere will be toasted.
end

Fridge Fascists

Lucy’s column for Feb 17th

They’ve riffled through our rubbish. They’ve leered into our kids’ lunch-boxes. And nagged us into eating our five-a-day portions of knobbly greens, tasteless tomatoes, bent bananas, and wilting watercress.
There are also moves afoot for busy-body council employees to turn up on our doorsteps and demand to know how many en-suites, utility rooms, extensions, and hen coops we’ve got, in order to re-value the amount of council tax we pay.
So it was only a matter of time before this Government turned us over to the food police, who are going to have the authority to knock on our doors, stick their heads in our pantries, fridges and freezers, to advise us on what to eat. And what to throw away.
So far, six councils have been given the authority to set up these calorie-counting and kitchen-bin snooping teams – each "inspector" being paid £8. 80 an hour of taxpayers’ hard-earned money for the privilege – to tell us how to use up left-overs, guide us on portion sizes, and hear this, guide us through the veritable minefield of sell-by, use-by, and best-before dates. As if we’re too thick to read the packet and end up poisoning ourselves.
How intrusive, petty, picky and pathetic is that? And what an insult to our intelligence.
We’ve already had one, very minor, run-in with the bin boffins. It so happened that, after cutting what is probably the longest garden hedge in our village – which is all very green, and organic, and natural, and saving the rain forests or whatever, with not a fence post or brick wall to interfere with nature, the environment, or the demise of the humble sparrow – himself, after piling the privet in the brown bin, picked up the scrappy bits in a carrier bag. And he, inadvertently, with no malice or aforethought, popped it on the top. Come bin-day, the chaps refused to empty the contents, and left an official note on the offending receptacle, pointing out the error of our ways. When it isn’t beyond the whit of man to just take out the miserable little bag and leave it at the side.
Friends have reported other such puerile mindedness on the part of local authority officialdom. Yet our streets continue to be littered with cans, cartons, fag packets and fast-food boxes and not one of us can remember ever seeing a street cleaner.
Those same friends are outraged at this latest edict which, believe you me, will be coming to a council near you soon. And himself is incandescent at the thought of the clip-board and pencil stub brigade darkening his very doorstep, with mutterings of : "Over my dead body." Which could well be the case, should they see the state of our freezer, which contains home-made pies of indeterminable date, and, indeed content, leading to such imponderables as whether to make gravy or custard. Not to mention cartons of what could be my imaginative soup, or last autumn’s fruit coulis, pear belle Helene, mushed-up apple windfalls.
But, you see, that’s where I think I’ll score. They can come and ferret in my freezer, poke in my pantry, delve in my dustbin, whenever they like, and I’ll tell you what: apart from a few potato peelings, soggy tea bags and satsuma skins, they’ll find nothing which couldn’t have been re-cycled by way of mincing, blending, frying, shoved in a pastry case, or just popped into a redundant ice-cream carton for a credit-crunch day. And what is beyond all that goes out for the birds, the foxes, and the neighbourhood cats.
So bring ‘em in, with their anoraks, logos, grubby notebooks, and they may learn something from somebody who’s got the food processor, the t-shirt, and knows how to blend the leftover leeks.
end

Bridesmaid

Lucy’s column for February 10.
Princelo…1
As a child – and twice a bridesmaid - I always longed to be a bride, which is why I usually managed to snaffle the bit of net curtain from various dressing-up boxes in games of "let’s pretend….". In fact, my sole ambitions in life were housewifery, motherhood, with a short career behind a Post Office counter, stamping bits of paper with an inky rubber seal.
Marrying a prince never entered my head. Mind you, I was hardly princess material, being landed with the sort of chubby legs and dimpled elbows only a mother could love. No, my escort down the aisle was always a soldier called Joe. Being a bit of a saddo, he was my imaginary friend, and I can picture him now – short, faceless, jaunty cap, and not even a stripe to his name.
Looking back, princes were the stuff of fairytale Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, because there weren’t many reality princes of the realm to dream about in those days – just a King and a few old dukes. I admit to fancying a bit of the lifestyle of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, because they wore nice kilts and cardies, had curls, and got to ride ponies every day. Oddly enough, neither of those two went on to marry princes. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t.
Because as we are all too well aware in these enlightened times, it doesn’t always work – think Princess Diana and king-in-waiting Charles, not to mention Camilla, who still has to have her bolt-hole home, and is rather backwards at coming forwards when it comes to cutting ribbons and touring factories.
Which is why I silently cheered recently when it was announced that South African Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry had split, and if reports are to be believed, it was her decision. Thank heaven, I thought, for her logical legal brain which, to her credit, saw the writing on the wall. Who on earth would choose that life? And why I secretly groan when the woman dubbed Waity Katie continues to sit on the sidelines, awaiting the Royal proposal. For what?
Can’t she, and the Middleton family – and they do reckon her mother is the epitome of pushy – see beyond the posh frocks, jewels, servants, forelock-tugging, and, like the Queen Mother before her, never having to pull a pair of curtains ever again in her life? She hasn’t even approached the cathedral steps yet, but already she’s stalking stags, insisting on being called Catherine, and living the life of a recluse as Prince William decides to pop the question.
As one who won’t even nip to the local Co-op without a bit of lippy in case some critical neighbour cops me looking like a dog’s dinner, how can somebody so young and intelligent put herself forward for the scrutiny which will follow her for ever? She has only to look to the adored Diana to realise that life within that particularly gilded cage can be sad, humiliating, lacking support, and wide open to criticism from both that frosty Firm and a picky public.
No doubt bagging a prince is the ultimate in social climbing. But as Chelsy has sussed before it’s too late, along with never having to utter : "I haven’t a rag to my back….." ever again, beckons the constant grind of cutting ribbons, planting trees, touring factories, conjuring up face-aching smiles, producing heirs and spares, entertaining bores and being bored by so-called entertainers, and knowing your place – usually below the salt. Not even the lure of the Crown Jewels could make up for that lack of fun and freedom.
Chelsy has found the courage to vacate the Royal boudoir. Ms Middleton could be about to make her bed. Just trust the stuff girly dreams are made of isn’t too lumpy.
end

Card Games

Lucy’s column for February 3.
Cardlo…1
Time was when folk would while away the wintry hours playing indoor games.
As a kid, it was snakes and ladders, snap, tiddly-winks and Ludo, with, perhaps, the odd game of dommies with granddad, just to make you feel a little bit grown up. And many a kitchen door had, hidden under the coats and work overalls, a dart board. But that was strictly for the big boys.
In those pre-telly days, I grew up in such a household – though the dart board is perhaps a figment of my imagination because I was raised in an all-girls household, and throwing a nifty arrow was the stuff uncles and boy cousins were made of. But cards? Tell me about it.
Or, indeed, let me remind you. Because my over-riding memory of my mother’s nights out was the humble whist-drive. Living, as we did, within spitting distance of my granny, and three of my aunts, the highlights of the week were the, at least, three of those nights they spent in each other’s company, going, if not for gold, then the wartime and immediately post-war equivalent – be it a packet of tea, a pound of sugar in a blue bag, a much-coveted five-bob (25p in today’s money), or the ultimate in luxury, a tin of salmon.
They shuffled from church hall to village hall, public house to dance hall, in their quest for a bit of light relief from the struggles of rationing and tedium of boredom, battling for Britain, and attempts to make ends meet. It was their social whirl, their outlet, their chance to catch up on all things family, gossipy, and find out what the neighbours were up to. But it wasn’t all beer and skittles. More a cup of tea and a Spam sandwich at the interval if they were lucky. Then came the inquest. And it’s here that mum Lavinia, and sisters Ada, Lucy and Mary had me riveted. How, I would ask myself, could they doll up, dress up, make up, and troll along for a pleasant couple of hours, pencils as sharp as their competitive brains – and end up having the mightiest of rows?
It was usually about who partnered whom, who dropped what card at the wrong time, and regular references to "trumping", which is a card-sharp term and nothing to do with wind. All that for, often enough, a packet of dried peas or a few parsnips from somebody’s allotment.
This didn’t begin and end at the inter-village gambling dens. Family weekends were often spent at each other’s houses. Playing Solo, which, I believe, is even more intense than whist. It’s there that they played for points, not even pennies, but the ensuing family feuds were the stuff world war three was made of, and many’s the time sisters and brothers-in-law barely spoke for days – or until the next whist drive, and a partner was needed…..
It was the onset of Bingo which disrupted the Pursglove sisters’ little tantrums and triumphs on the card front, though as a family, we continued to wreak havoc round the table at Orgill Towers come Christmas or some such get-together. Turn full circle, and with the credit crunch, we’re back playing cards again. Thanks to Ken and Mave Monk in Mallorca, who introduced us to the game, we’ve taken up Kaluki. Sister Natalie and brother-in-law Pete are in on the act, together with friends Julie and Rob Skivington.
Son Simon won’t entertain it, undoubtedly a throw-back to the card wars he witnessed as an impressionable child. But then, he’ll spend a small fortune on a Rams season ticket, and still be miserable for an entire weekend.
Could there be a whist drive revival? As entertainment, it can be cheap. And, if you choose the right partner, even cheerful.
end