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.
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