TWO SHOTGUN WEDDINGS …

‘THE BATEMANS & THE JONES’ –

AND HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR KNICKERS IN A CRISIS!

Chapter 3

Natalie publishes chapter 3 of her stories about Weddings based on ‘What’s in a Snowball?’ As she explains some of her childhood experiences of her childhood home

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My mother, Josephine, youngest brother Bruce was a twin; he was the first born and was placed downstairs in a pram, out of the way, whilst the midwife dealt with the second more complicated birth of his sibling, which sadly did not survive.

There was a huge amount of commotion and panic going on upstairs when Josephine came into the kitchen and came across this small being in the pram, pink and wriggling. A girl in her early teenage years she decided that she would take the baby for a walk to take it away from all the drama that was playing out upstairs. Walking the baby along the road she entered the gates to the park and followed the foot path alongside the brook, stopping to cuddle the baby in her arms and chatting away to him. The little boy had been tightly wrapped in a blanket to keep him snug. Whilst playing with the baby Josephine was unaware that the blanket had begun to unravel and become loose, so as she tried to get a better hold on the baby the blanket became completely loose and the baby fell free, in her panic grasping and grabbing at the child he was propelled into the air and straight into the fast running brook. She watched as the baby went underwater before bobbing to the surface of the water again, face down. The small creature bounced along following the water. Fortunately for my mother, who could not swim the stream was relatively shallow at this point, so she jumped in, soaking her shoes and the bottom of her dress and chased after the child. Grasping out at the baby and making jabs at his limbs but unfortunately was unable to get a good hold on Bruce, if anything her attempts were propelling the infant forward out of her grasp. Splashing around in her panic chasing down the stream she made repeated attempts to get a hold on the baby but his skin was wet and slippery. Eventually she managed to hang onto one of Bruce’s legs and hoist him upside down out of the water, pulling the bundle to her chest with both arms she waded back and scrambled onto the bank, with this now screeching baby.

Josephine quickly wrapped him back up in the blanket and put him back in the pram and walked him at fast pace back home with the baby still howling. Arriving home she hastily put the pram back in the house and went off to find her other siblings leaving Bruce, unhappy and alone. In my mother’s retelling of this story she remembers that the ‘grown up’s’ coming down to see the baby and could not understand why the child was freezing cold and wet, she never owned up to what had happened. Bruce never stopped screaming and grizzling for the next few years causing a visiting aunt to observe; “does that child ever smile?”

Josephine is the eldest sister to five unruly brothers, ‘the Bateman boys’. I am told that she had a metal rod that she used against her brothers if they stepped out of line. They were at best a handful, rough and ready and uncontrollable, quite the opposite of their delicate and demure mother, my Nanna, the family of eight squeezed into their 3 bedroomed semi-detached Barnet council house, 178 Fallowden Way, London, NW11.

178 backed onto the ‘well kempt’ Northway Park Gardens, a beautiful large green space with a bubbling brook running through the grounds, here the children had lots of places to run free and play, hiding underneath the beautiful weeping willows. Fortunately for the Bateman children there was a large tear in the wire fence at the bottom of their long garden allowing them immediate access to the park all day until the park warden chased them off home in the evening back to Nanna, their adoring mother with her blond curled bob, slim fitting clothes. She was a beautiful woman, who when I remember her had very slightly bow legs and a small pop-belly, due most probably to having so many pregnancies, her hands had been damaged by years of working to feed her family in the freezing butchers department of Waitrose / John Lewis giving her arthritis. She was the happiest person you could wish to meet, simple, kind and joyful, she loved her fashion and was always well turned out in the styles of the moment, or her interpretation of those styles, she always wore the brightest of colours mostly made of nylons. Her nails were always painted and she liked her sparkly makeup. Because of her financial circumstances, Nanna was a fan of a thrifty purchase, which meant that she quite often bought things on price not necessarily on their suitability, which was to amusement of me and my mother in later years, for example she had purchased a pair of mauve sling backs in a sale, and they were shinny with a kitten heel, on one of our many visits to John Lewis Partners, Peter Jones, Sloane Square, Chelsea, which my mother adored to go to and trawl the floors, for necessary items to buy. Which was encouraged by the fact that Nanna had a John Lewis partnership card which meant a good discount. My mother’s idea of heaven! After an extensive route march of the shop, Nanna was complaining that her feet were sore, and she was visibly walking differently. So we found a place for her to sit to take her shoes off, which she did. Josephine shook the shoe hard and a number of squashed up cotton wall balls fell out of the shoe. It transpired that Nanna had like the shoes, but they were not in her size so she bought them and had stuffed cotton wool in the toes so that they would fit her, this apparently had worked the first time well, but Nanna had forgotten that she had put cotton wool in the shoe so she had stuffed more in the toe, this meant that the shoes were actually too small for her, hence the pain in her feet! We had a similar experience with a pair of boots that she had bought, somehow she hand managed to spill a bottle of pills in them, so that when we investigated what the problem was that time it turned out to be squashed powdered pills all attached to her feet.

Nanna, despite some of the antics of her sons always remained soft natured and sweet, which to me was unusually considering she was married to Ted. Edward was to me a mean character out of a children’s TV series, his face was hollowed and his mouth always ‘very’ turned down and shiny because it was always wet, he had a salt and pepper moustache which was in a sort of elongated Hitler style, he was very pale and his hair that was sparse and greasy in a comb over style. He was to me a tall man but his frame was eaten away by illness, he too had bow legs? He was fiercely jealous of anyone that was near his wife, even his small grandchildren.

It was never really on the books that my Nanna would marry, she was the daughter of a bank manager with two older brothers, she was the apple of her father’s eyes, but was considered to be perhaps too simple to marry and was content to spend time living with her parents. She told me stories about her childhood of sitting on the stairs, watching large platters of food going up and down the stairs to the dining room above, where her parents would be holding parties. When plates come back down stairs to the kitchen the cook would allow her and her brothers to clean up the rich pickings of leftover food. Grand times indeed!

Sometime in her middle to late 20’s she was on a bus this was where she meet my Ted, against the odds, considering Ted’s lack of charm, however love blossomed and subsequently they got married. Nanna’s father was not particularly keen on the union and was concerned how Ted was going to look after her, given his background.

From what I know Ted he was the son of parents that worked on the trains dealing with the coal deliveries. As a small child when entering my great grandmother’s house in Cricklewood, it made a great impression on me, the house was situated on a grey dusty street, that even to my small view on the world, appeared as if everything was created in miniature and in hues of black, grey and white, these tiny terraced houses had been stained by years of being backed onto the railway tracks were trains brought in the coal, backward and forward. When you entered the tiny house, it was truly from another era, in the small living / kitchen room there was a tiny open grate with embers shinning, a pot on the side that whistled when it was boiled, lace curtains at the window, that had seen better days and to the left a stairwell with an open door and a curtain hanging over the entrance to the steps. Everything in the house had been tainted with soot dust over the years and nothing appeared in colour, there was a small table in the middle of the room where we were going to have our lunch, which I was very dubious about. My great grandmother, tiny, stooped with her hair in a thin bun at the back of her head, barley acknowledge us, she just went over to the grate pulled out some wood from a scuttle bucket at the side of the room and snapped it in half over her knee and threw it on the fire, this enthralled my brother Laurie, who took it upon himself to take a piece of wood and try and do the same. It was clearly a skill as Laurie bash and cracked the stick of wood on his leg, unable to dent it let alone break it! When she turned around she took the wood from Laurie and snapped it with ease over her knee and threw it on the fire. I think she smiled at him I am not sure as there was the most enormous sound of a beeping horn and then the dirty dense acerbic smell and noise of a chuffing train arriving at the back of the house behind the wall, blowing air into the house via the back door, which lead to a minuscule cobbled yard. It was like a scene from a Hitchcock film, everything rattled and the tatty lace curtain quivered in the breeze. Great Grandmother never heard a thing she was by that time quite deaf, and most probably immune to the regular arrival of the foul smelling train. Ted’s father by this time had died and I never met him, to my knowledge, but was told by my mother that he was the nicest of people with all the time in the world for his granddaughter Josephine and her siblings… So no-one knew where Ted’s grumpy nature came from.          

Ted and Nanna went off on their honeymoon and that night her father died, and so she was now left with the miserable, ill-natured, bad tempered Ted. They started their married life living in rented rooms in a large house. Within the first year of their marriage they had Josephine my mother; over the years it became obvious to me that Nanna did not like anything sexually orientated, I am not really sure if she really, at least initially understood how babies were made, she was and remained completely unworldly. If an advert came on the television about women shaving their legs, she would start to sing in order to divert our attention! Sex was an enigma, this was really a mantra amongst my parents and grandparents. It was something to be frowned upon at all times and was only used as a form of procreation – if indeed that is how babies were made. It was an every present underbelly of something that was quite disgusting!  Yet there was all these children!

Nanna found herself at home alone with this small bundle, my mother, doting on her feeding and singing to this new beautiful child, but she had no real clue on how to look after a baby. Fortunately for my mother an early intervention by an aunt saved my mother’s life, she came to visit and view this new child, looking down at the baby the aunt realised something was very wrong. Josephine was puce and having difficulty breathing, she asked Florence what she was feeding the baby. “Milk and little bits of chopped up liver.”  The sweet and kind hearted Florence, had assumed that she was doing a kindness in feeding the baby small pieces of liver, as you would do to perhaps a weening puppy. My mother spent days in hospital recovering and Nanna was taught how to feed a new baby, which was good news for my mother’s five brother’s survival!

As time went by and Ted’s health deteriorated, so Nanna had many jobs to help bring up her large family, one was working at the local bakery, where there was another staff member also called Florence, so it was decided that Nanna’s new name would be Jean, I never heard her called Florence by anyone including Ted, who liked to shout her name a lot, in gruff unedifying sneers; ‘Jean, Jean! For God sake Jean, where are you woman, Jean you are so stupid”. And on it would go.  Jean would come running, “Yes Ted, what can I get you?” Nanna always at his beck and call always wanting to help, Ted never ever with a kind word for her. Smelly Ted was always there wheezing away, I say smelly Ted, because he would come close to your face when he wanted to talk and his breath had a sort of sweet antiseptic smell like old fashion ‘TCP’, which was a medicine that you gargled if you had a sore throat which had an overwhelming smell. Ted by this stage was suffering from a non-curable emphysema a lung condition causing shortness of breath. He was always gasping for breath and as time went on the condition worsened. When they used to visit us at our home Dutch Gardens, Nanna would arrive all happy and Ted by then would arrive in his wheel chair with his enormous heavy metal canister of oxygen being wheeled along behind him by Nanna. It was believed that Ted’s illness was caused when he worked in the upholstery industry where it was believed that he ingested fibres that caused his ill health condition after that he never worked again…. He just shouted at Nanna.

One of the more peculiar things I remember Nanna telling me, a story about the next door neighbour, a young man who had taken a liking to the young Florence, they used to chat convivially over the garden hedge, this young man was looking after his elderly mother, when Ted became aware that they were talking he would call Jean away and tell her not to talk to the young man. As time went on the young man would wave at her over the fence when he was in the garden. One day there was a large attendance of police in the garden of the house next door, apparently ‘the nice young man’ had killed his mother cutting her head off and leaving it in the sink? I never made head nor tail of this story as it was such an out of character story for her to tell? She was usually full of silliness, fun and kindness. So much so that even my young cousins would try and differentiate between their two grandmothers, my aunt’s mother smoked a great deal, I heard one cousin saying to the other, ‘which one? Who are you talking about Coughing Nanna or Silly Nanna?’. Which kind of summed her up, she wanted to make people happy.  She was incapable of being anything but nice. She scrimped and saved all her life, when her children were small, she did her best to make it a home, she was a terrible cook, couldn’t sew, in the winter the pipes would freeze and burst so that the children would wade through icy water across the kitchen floor. Nanna believed her boys where the sweetest things, in real terms as they grew up they were part of the swinging 60’s and as wild as they came, happy to be in a pub drinking the night away and never shy of a punch up at the end evening.

When Ted died, it meant that Nanna had the house to herself, which allowed her the freedom to indulge her love of all things pretty and developed her interest in interior design, she had always enjoyed decorating the house, when her children were younger she would even use wrapping paper as wall paper and flour and water as glue to brighten up the house. One particular design that I remember was her Edwardian look. She redecorated her lounge area, over the electric fireplace she had hung six gold sprayed picture frames set in a circle. She had cut pictures out of her Edwardian magazine and put them in the gold frames, at the top was an elegant picture of a young Lady, representing my mother and then the rest bar one were of male figures, representing her boys. The bottom picture was of another female. I asked who the other female picture was supposed to be. She told me that there were not enough images of men in the magazine so the other female picture was of Chris, this was a great source of amusement to Christopher her son. 

In her later life she developed dementia and eventually needed to be put into a home. One afternoon when she had been unwell she was being helped by one of the staff in her room. Her boys came to see her and were invited to sit in the old peoples lounge and wait while they sorted out Nanna. They quickly realised that there was a free open bar for the elderly residences. For the next hour or so they ‘piled’ their way through the alcohol and in the process got rowdier and rowdier… Nanna upstairs in her bed, turned to the nurse and said, ‘what a lovely sound of my boys playing downstairs’! As a result of this particular event and to stop Nanna being thrown out of the nursing home, my father Trevor was quick to restock the bar and buy the nursing home two large TV’s, one for the residents lounge and one for the matrons office! There were many occasions like this with the Bateman boys and it was not at all unusual for Trevor to receive a call to his office asking for one or other of them to be bailed out of the local ‘nick’!

My mother was quite a different character to her brothers, like her mother she too liked all things pretty and beautiful, having lived with all these boys, she wanted another lifestyle, like her mother was stunningly beautiful, but Josephine had a will to change her future and she was bright. She won a place at a secretarial college, to learn touch typing and Greggs shorthand. She went to the top of the class, but there were some small fees to pay to meet with her studies. So Nanna took the ‘boys’ around the local area carol singing to raise cash for their sister. It was at Greggs secretarial college that Josephine met Elvira Jones, who came from Neasden NW10.

Elvira Jones, was the third youngest of seven surviving children, five boys and two girls. The fourth youngest being Trevor, my father. On a journey home Elvira brought her fellow student back with her, and so Josephine meet Trevor Wynne-Jones.

The Jones family were worlds apart from the Bateman’s. Well educated highly pompous and highly motivated, they are all dramatic and highly strung. The Jones siblings were extremely strong characters and were exceptionally competitive against one another, which has continued throughout their lives. The eldest son Ivor, a tall man, a whopping 12lbs at birth, became the youngest ships captain in the Navy, he was the favourite of his mother’s children and the two girls Elvira and Dilys idolised him. Elvira a strong bright and independent woman who was Trevor’s nemesis, married into the film industry, lived in a whopping house near Brighton where I spent many happy months marauding around the grounds with my cousins, building dens and finding hidden cupboards in the old house. Hilbrey and Roger, were as thick as thieves and had both been evacuated together, their endless conversation took the form of a sort of desperate comedy duo act on speed, both bouncing off each other, making stupid digs at their siblings, eyes popping out of their heads. Roger and his wife Barbara emigrated to Australia, turned into Mormons and had seven children, whilst Hilbery joined Trevor his younger brothers construction company, where there was a falling out between the two brother’s and for years they never spoke again, nor would Hilbery and his wife Nora come to any family event that my parents were at! Eventually they emigrated to Canada. Trevor, a maverick, a schemer and a tactician, was his mother’s least favourite, always at the front of the deal, he manage to get himself a scholarship to the London academy of art, but his father Harry said, ‘no’, he had to get himself a proper job. So he did a sales apprenticeship, which he excelled in and launched himself into the construction industry making himself millions, not always in the most moral way! The youngest boy Ellis, extremely highly strung and nervy, like all youngest children desperate to follow and emulate his older brothers, particularly Trevor, which in his young life got him into all sorts of complex trouble, not least in steeling lead off the local church roof! Ellis emigrated to Canada. And then the baby Dilys who all the boys and parents doted on, she was indulged and simply went along with the rest of the brood.

Their mother, my grandma Pidgie, Doris Margareta Jones, the daughter of a Swedish master tailor Carl and his wife Rosina, my name sake, who I am told was Italian, was one of his seamstress’s. Carl Franzen had fled Sweden in the First World War and set up shop in London. They had three children, the youngest of which was my grandmother, Cyril her brother was a renowned gambler who had houses all over the place in order to hide from any potential creditor and or wife/girlfriend and their older brother Leonard was some sort of steward of car racing tracks. Doris was well educated, beautiful and very strong willed. She was a first class pianist and delighted in all things that were wild, being a young woman growing up in the 1920’s. Some of Doris wilder behaviour upset her mother Rosina. According to Grandma Pidgie, she was part of a swing band, which used to practice in a shed in her parents garden much to the irritation of the neighbours. She played sax and piano, she also used her piano skills in the local cinemas for the musical accompaniment of the black and white films.

Doris fell in love with one of the other musicians, who she claim to have lived with for a while, [not at all sure how accurate this bit is?]. He died of tuberculosis on Friday 13th – a date that she hated and it was on the re-bound she met up with a handsome ship’s captain, Hugh Jones who she fell in love with. His ship sunk and he was lost at sea, so again on the re-bound she fell for Hugh’s brother Henry, Harry to all who knew him. She fell pregnant with their first child Ivor, so Doris and Harry were married, a shot gun wedding. My paternal grandparents the Jones. If you are wondering why she was known as Grandma Pidgie, the reason is because my mother did not want me to get confused between my two grandmothers. Grandma had a cat called Pidge and so my mother referred to her for my understanding and clarification as Grandma Pidgie as opposed to Nanna! Yes I know what you are thinking, I thought the same at the time even though I was small. It makes no sense as neither name nor person were similar – but somehow it made sense to my mother, so I did as I was told. 

Doris and Harry could not have been more different if you had tried to make them so. She was very highly strung, intelligent, socially educated and part of a London crowd. Harry a complex man was from the North near Newcastle had simple values and found his wife demanding and hysterical. Once Doris left Harry at home to go to the shops, when she came back she found him washing down the hallway, having been in the navy, he was slushing down the hall with buckets of water and a brush, pushing the water into the hall then brushing it through from the front door to the back. Doris was not amused!

Grandma reminded me a little of the cartoonist Giles depiction of a Grandma, she was small, a little round and had as she called them Charlie Chapman feet, both turned out, she was very proud of her turned out feet. Her hair was auburn, wavy and long tied in a bun until she had an accident damaging her shoulder and decided to have her hair bobbed. She wore to my mind grandma style practical clothes, there was always a flesh colour girdle with suspenders attached hanging drying somewhere in the house. Grandma was highly industrious, always doing something, mending, making and creating she had an artistic flair. Her main hobbies were knitting and crocheting at super-fast pace whilst watching the television or having a conversation, often I would stand hands out stretched holding her wool whilst she turned it into wool balls. There was always a project on the go, knitting something for someone, quite often for my mother.

At Dutch Gardens our new home, my mother went through her decorating a toilet roll phase, my mother has many design phases, this was one of the earlier and less successful ones, in all the bathrooms and toilets with the exception of my brother’s and mine, Grandma had been deployed to knit flamboyant woollen dresses to fit over hideous plastic Cindy dolls, the dolls legs were then shoved into the centre of toilet rolls and their dresses were used to cover the main body of the toilet roll. They were knitted out of odd bits of wool that were left over from other projects, one had a silvery purple and red dress, and even to my young mind they were revolting in the extreme.

These creations were used mostly for the spare roll that resided on top of the loo. The problem was with these creations, that once the spare toilet roll was needed the dolls would lay prostrate on the toilet showing their bare bottoms, legs akimbo, at parties when the Bateman boys were in the house, we would find the dolls all over the house in the most unflattering poses! So thankfully after a season or two the dolls were disposed of, thank God!

In my mother’s mock Victorian lace period, Grandma was billeted into crocheting lace tablecloths, these were the most elaborate creations, with lace flowers attached to more lace flowers, some so complicated that they were raised, they were deposited all over the house on tables of all sizes that my mother had acquired, once my mother gets an idea she takes it to the maximum. The tablecloths dropped to the ground, you had to be careful not to catch your shoe in them, when you walked by. They could be really irritating, you had to be really careful how you put a glass or a plate down as there was not a level surface to be had in the house, quite funny if they were entertaining as wine glasses would be falling all over the place.        

Outside of my paternal grandparents having all these children they never saw eye to eye on anything, she was a Conservative and he was pro-Labour, which would cause all sorts of problems. Once my father was on the phone to Grandma’s best friend Mrs Fox a spinster and she made the mistake of saying to Trevor – ‘I really don’t understand why they dislike each other so much, they must have liked something about each other look at all the children they had!’ This was met with short shrift from Trevor! But let’s face it Mrs Fox had a point!

5 Mead Plat, had two bedrooms and a box room upstairs with a bathroom and separate WC, so very modern by comparison with Nanna’s house in some ways, which had an outside toilet and a tin bath under the kitchen sink, the Bateman family must of taken their lives in their own hands bathing in the tin bath because all the electrical appliances were plugged into one overhanging light bulb in the ceiling!

Downstairs at Grandma’s house there was a front room which was Grandma’s and a back room which was Grandpa’s with a separate kitchen all separated by a freezing cold hall as there was no central heating in the house and a small pantry at the front of the house, which grandma kept her collection of crockery and other special items. When visiting my grandparents in Neasden there was order, no attempt at interior design, I don’t think the council house had been decorated since they moved in, everything was in its place and it was spick and span. In Grandma’s room there was an old fire with green tiles, which was her only form of heating, an old wooden extendable dining table with a white lace table cloth place on it at an angle so to show the corners of the table, plot plants on the window sill and a large glass ashtray in the middle of table, even though she did not smoke, it was a curtsey for guests and also served a purpose of keeping the table cloth in place otherwise it would have slipped off the highly polished wooden surface. There were a couple of worn out arm chairs, a leather Moroccan style pouffe, which I loved and her upright piano. Grandpa’s room was always freezing as he rarely had his electric fire on. He also had a wooden dining table and chairs, his arm chair in the corner next to his huge wireless which he used to listen to military music, against the wall by the door was a cabinet with pictures of both his daughters when they were young, Dilys and Elvira, none of his sons. There were other military pictures doted around the room. We didn’t very often go into this room, unless it was Christmas then all hostilities between the two of them, ‘in the main’ had to be put on hold, because all the grandchildren would be there, this meant my grandparents were temporally allowed to go into each other’s rooms. Christmas dinner when I was very small was served in Harry’s room. Grandma’s room was where all the Christmas decorations and tree was housed and where we would open our presents and mostly sit. Grandma had hundreds of decorations and stings and strings of electric lights, I particularly remember the pink prancing reindeer that would dance around the room. Every Christmas without exception there would be a ‘pop’ and to me the lovely smell, like at lighted match and the house would go black. One of grownups would run to get the electrics back on whilst the rest would pull plugs out all over the place. Then started the process of plugging each string of lights back into the plug until they worked out which was the culprit string that has a blown light, once identified, and the electricity had been turned on again, Grandma would rush off to her pantry and return back with her huge tin box full of spare fairy light bulbs and the process of unscrewing each bulb and putting a new one in to check if that was the blown bulb would start, blowing the electricity each time until the culprit bulb was found. It was not unusual for this process to happen a few times over the day. It was a hard day for Grandma when she was finally persuaded to give up her Christmas lights as they were quite frankly a fire hazard.  

Outside of those early Christmas’s strict rules were kept at all times at the Jones house, there was no fraternizing with the enemy. Grandma’s favourite saying when referring to Harry was that ‘he makes me spit’, she said it at least once a day and on bad days a lot more. As a child this was extremely exciting to think that my grandmother was going to do something quite so disgusting and I would wait with excitement to see her do it, she never did, it was just something she said and her own children never even batted an eyelid at the comment, she had said it so often. After a very serious accident, which left Harry unable to speak, such was the severity of his injury, he would stammer and get so frustrated, Doris took it upon herself to teach him to speak again, she would write out great lists of simple arithmetic and spellings and leave him at his table, to do the maths and copy the spellings, sometimes, rarely he was even allowed at her table to learn all the work she had set for him. It took her well over a year to get him able to speak again and as he got better, and when she would infuriated him, he would whisper under his breath, so both she and I could hear, ‘bloody bitch and bloody Swedish bitch’. Nothing had changed, you could think that in the end this was a great show of love on her behalf, but it turned out that she could not stand the idea of him being totally reliant on her, so he had to get better, which he did and that meant that their ridged regime of how they lived their lives and all hostilities could continue, as before.

Harry, when he was younger looked to me, like Stan Laurel from the old black and white films of Laurel and Hardy, but a bit broader set. As an older man, he was to us grandchildren a strict man, ridged in his habits but not unkind, he would frog march Laurie and I out the house around the streets and we would end up at the pub where he would go in leaving us in the car park on the North Circular road, whilst he nipped in for a quick pint, before marching us back, quick pace home to Grandma for lunch. As we got older, I found him quite funny, his knowledge of London was immense, due to his many years as a bus conductor, once when we were at the top of the post office tower in London, now BT tower, I stood outside on the balcony and he could tell me all the history of the city, I joked with him, that his knowledge was via all the pubs. This would cause his typical, hissing laugh through his teeth and his iron grip would grasp my arm, this was all part of his character as was his desire when we were out to shout at the top of his voice to his wife when he saw a sign to the ladies toilets. ‘Doris there is the lavatory’… only to be followed by … ‘he makes me spit!’… Then would come his hissing laugh.

He died a few years before Grandma in his late 80’s, but up until then she made his egg and bacon every morning which would be delivered to the door of his room, always begrudgingly. Then at about 10:30 he would either cycle or get the bus to the local bus depot, were he had worked all his life as a bus conductor, he never learned to drive himself. At the depot he would chat with his mates and colleagues, have a ‘light’ boiled egg and toast and make it back to grandma for his lunch, usually meat and two veg followed by pudding, in the afternoon he would sit in his chair, listen to his rousing military music on his large radio, early afternoon he would walk to the local pub, have a pint and a chat with whoever was there and make it back home where Doris had prepared his second meal of meat and two veg with pudding! Delivered begrudgingly to his door.  A simple life some would say!

I think that in my younger life it was coloured by grandma’s animosity toward him, and he could be very difficult, however in the main as I got older I realised that he was a man of his generation, ill-suited to someone like Grandma as she was to him. He was extremely knowledgeable about history and politics, he loved the program ‘Spitting Image’, no irony there! And would try and engage me in conversations on topic. He would sit in his garden which was split into two, one half a small lawn with a tree, the further part of the garden was dedicated to growing vegetables, which must have been necessary to feed his large family. There he would listen to the bands of my generation playing at Wembley Stadium as the sound would travel to his garden and when he saw me next he would give me his opinion on the performance.  

I have fond memories of him standing with one foot into the door of Grandma’s room, when I used to visit, she tooting loudly that he was anywhere near her room, he smoked rollups which he had a little machine to make them, but he would say to me ‘what about one of those cigarettes for you grandfather’, I smoked at the time, I would offer him the packet and he would take two cigarettes, put them in his top pocket and Grandma would want to spit and he would be delighted and go off back to his room, with his hissing laugh.

There was something for me as a child that was magical about Grandma, she was the centre of everyone in a way and as pivotal to what went on in the family. She would encourage me to be creative and would always have a story about everything. I felt safe around her. She was in a way always there. She would give me advice on just about everything, and she would be comforting in a crisis. She had time for me, she could also be quite stern if she felt the need. She was her own person. Some of her stories were quite out there, which I suppose is what made her interesting to me as a small child. She would repeatedly give me advice on things, such as, ‘if I was ever in an accident, to make sure I had clean knickers on; keep a spare pair in your handbag’. When she first told me this, I just took it like much of the things she said as ‘verbatim’, but as time went by and she repeated it as ‘sage advice’,  I couldn’t help wondering why after an accident anyone would be looking in my knickers? Surly they would be more interested in dealing with any wounds I had sustained? Also it confused me as to how I would know the moment before I was going to have the accident which would then prompt me to put the clean knickers on, or where I was going to change into them? And as I got older I just hoped that if I had an accident that anyone that was trying to help me was not a raving pervert! Another ‘sage advice’ was, ‘if your knickers ever fell down when you were walking along the street, just step out of them and keep walking, if anyone catches you up and tries to give you them back – just say politely they are not yours’. Again I could not see a situation where my knickers were going to suddenly fall to the floor and I thought it absurd that anyone would want to pick them up and run after you and offer them back?

So, after Elvira’s introduction, the relationship between my mother and Trevor continued to blossom and Trevor bought a tandem bicycle, and he and my mother would go on cycling holidays. Honestly, if I had not seen the black and white pictures I would never have believed that you would get my mother on a bike. At some stage they decided to get married and my mother had a wedding photograph book with a big padded cover that I used to look at when I was little. For some reason my mother would always comment when I was looking at the album that she was 18 when she married Trevor, she was quite persistent, so much so that when I used to show the album to anyone else, the minute I saw my mother I would point at her and say she was 18. In real terms it made no odds to me, but it was something she was very keen on me understanding. When I was about 11 or 12, I was looking for something in the cupboard and came across the album again, leafing through it, I started to notice a few things, like my aunt Dilys who was younger than my parents, however if she was as old as she looked in the pictures how could my mother be 18? I flicked though to the back of the album and there were various telegrams with dates on them wishing the happy couple good luck, I then did more sleuthing, of which I was particularly good at. Found some other dates in the album and … ‘Bingo’, I realised that my mother was in fact 20 years old. Then being the sort of child I was, mainly I think because there were always secrets in the family, I did a few more calculations. And I realised what the situation was.

   My parents were home this particular afternoon, which was rare. I marched up the stairs with the album under my arm and presented my case to what to be fair were my bemused parents. The date had been drummed into me that my mother was 18, was because she had actually married Trevor when she was nearly 21, pregnant with my brother Laurie! Trevor was ‘sort of amused’, my mother was not at all amused, I was ejected from the room and told under no circumstances was I to tell my brother that he had been conceived out of wedlock! A second shot-gun wedding. I was impressed. I never did say anything to Laurie. Not really sure if he knows now?

Opening Christmas presents at my mothers house, much later in their lives….

Having your Cake & Eating it!

Victoria Sandwich cake

If you have read any of the Me/Myself & I ‘blog’ stories then you will know that I have an extraordinary relationship with my childhood… Perhaps we all do? This memory came to me when I was making a large Victoria Sandwich cake for the family the other day..

I’ve never liked cakes, ever, even as a child, the very idea of putting that sickly sweet, glutenous mouthful of tacky wall paper glue into my mouth to find that it then sticks to the roof of my mouth & coats my tongue & teeth with edible adhesive .. It’s really not my thing! Agreed, not a great ‘intro’ to a story about cakes …

However I do love making cakes! Also, I’m not half bad at it! I don’t taste them, but to be fair who does taste the uncooked version of cake? I rely on a fantastic sense of smell & an overall understanding of the ingredients & the process, also I have many willing participants who taste the cakes along the way & enjoy testing the ultimate results.

My window into the world of cakes was via my mother who loves cakes & pastries, all things pretty, sweet & nice. Deserts give her great pleasure, she is a good cook herself, now in her latter years, she will happily spend a great deal of time making a good cake, she enjoys them and never puts on weight as she indulges in her home made cuisine! Having your Cake & Eating it very much apply’s to my mum … Occasionally she will ask my advice on a particular recipe. So it is something we have in common on some level.. Having enjoyed herself making a cake or four, she deposits them to grateful recipients in her local area. Often to “the old lady upstairs”, as it happens ‘the old lady upstairs’ is in fact younger than my mother, a minor point in my mothers world!

As children my parents would take my brother & I out on long drives from London to tea houses in the country; another thing I was not keen on, long car journey’s! “Are we there yet?” Arriving at these always busy tea houses crammed full of tables covered in ill-fitting over-washed table cloths, we squeezing through the packed cafe apologising to the already seated patrons to finally make our way to the empty table that beckoned us. Shunting our seats rather too tightly under the table, as we were taught to by my father, which meant that you were pinned to the table & unnecessarily close to the proceeding, in my case being small by my neck, my father was obsessed by making sure we were “tucked in tight”? He would jump up hold the edges of the chair & use his leg & knee to make sure that we were well & truly under the table, it made it impossible for me to get my hands out from under the table so that I might at some stage eat the cake I didn’t like! Parents are weird?

My parents viewed the menu, scanning the many delights of the cafe cuisine. Menu’s in those days were either typed up, carbon copy style with cross outs or tippexed where spelling mistakes were made & then attached to maroon clip boards, the clip boards had always seen better days the plastic at the edges of the board was invariably split & the battered cardboard centre was peeking through. Or the worse menu; the encapsulated plastic menu always a bit sticky & the edges were sharp, they resided in a plastic clip set in the centre of the table, sometimes you would have to prize them apart from each other in order to view. Yuck!

This was my opportunity to scan the surroundings, the decor, the people, but firstly the table were we sat at, I had made a mental note on these many visits & observed that all tea houses seemed to suffer with the same hygiene issues? Being the smallest therefore my face was the closest to the table it was obvious to me that many customers had already sat at this table prior to us. Thus the cloth was invariably covered in other peoples crumbs; which grossed me out! The table cloths were littered with bits of over toasted tea cake, small pieces of crusty toast & cake that had missed the previous occupants mouth & worse of all on occasions slimy bits of butter & jam that were smeared across the fabric. Also Gross!

In some of the more forward thinking establishments, they had a remedy to this problem, a metal tool that they would scrap across the table cloth in an attempt to collect up the debris of the now discarded bun-droppings, but all it actually did was ‘ruche’ the fabric into gathered pockets that would hide the bun-droppings underneath; so when the waitress had finished doing this piece of drama & straightened the table cloth out again you were now left with wavy lines of crumbs, more artistic perhaps, but still equally revolting!

These parlours back in the day, were mostly run by oddly shaped older women wearing frilly floral aprons tied too tightly at the waist; it did not escape my notice that these rosy-red cheeked women also had uneven floppy bosoms hanging over the their waistband, it occurred to me at the time that these ladies could do with what was a phenomenon at Grandmas house, both my aunts never stopped talking about the new revolution a ‘Playtex cross your heart bra’ this apparently according to my aunt Dilys ‘separates and lifts the breasts whilst ensuring the perfect fit’.. Regrettably this invention came a little bit late in life for Grandma & these ladies waiting the tables. Grandma was an advocate of a ‘girdle’, I only saw it once, hanging on the line, I think it was a secret, it was an odd creation with ‘dangly’ elastic hanging at the base, in later life I discovered this was a ‘suspender’, not that fashionable then, but now very Madonna or Jean Paul-Gautier, now the height of sexiness! Although Grandma was not quite that shape or possibly never had the inclination? Given the fact that she already had seven children!

My sleuthing the table cloth was interrupted by mum, “What would you both like to eat?”, she said looking at Laurie, my elder brother; she actually meant what cake do you want to eat? Any public conversation with Laurie, left him speechless. Laurie did not like to talk, he was painfully shy & introspective. I came along a number of years later & took it upon myself to talk for him, something at this stage in our lives he was mostly grateful for! Food wise Laurie mostly only liked baked beans & Arctic Roll, which was ice-cream wrapped in jam & covered in sickly sponge cake, a limited diet to be fair but it kept Laurie happy & that in turn kept my mother happy & I suffered it. I have nothing against baked beans, with the exception of having to share a room with my brother, but I detested the Arctic Roll, I would peal the sponge off & give that to Laurie & try & eat the ice-cream from inside to out so as to not have to eat any jam.

Jam, on reflection I reluctantly accepted latter in my life it was contained in my favourite biscuits which for a short while were Jammie Dodgers, I like the taste of the biscuit bit, less keen on the jam, but I would suffer it. When we moved out of London into the country my parents bought me a four poster bed, which my mother loved. Having a substantially bigger house, my mother followed in the footsteps of my aunt Elvira & took to doing large shopping visits to ‘cash & carry’, the booty was distributed all over the house, if you opened the small high level bathroom cabinet you were quite likely to be bombarded with two gross worth of coloured loo rolls or if you went ‘snooping’ about the house you could well come across an enormous amount of tins of backed beans hidden in the guest bedroom cabinets, there was ‘booty’ stashed everywhere in the house?

For some strange reason best known to my mother she would buy boxes of 24 packets of Jammie Dodgers and stash them in the void under my bed along with multi packs of tin dog & cat food. I was at this time a ‘chubby’ child, so when it came to an after dinner treat, I was allowed to take 1 biscuit from the biscuit tin in the kitchen. Except when I went to bed later, I would hang upside down on my bed & pull up the lace valiance around the bed & view the boxes of Jammie Dodgers hidden underneath. I was not a naughty child particularly at this stage of my life, but if I saw that the box had been open & a number of packets had been removed I would take a packet out & regroup with it in my bed. Having eaten with gusto 3 or 4 biscuits I would feel sick, the only problem was that I was now left with the rest of the packet. This was an issue, it was not easy to hide anything in my bedroom as my mother was constantly re-arranging furniture in there & changing the theme of my room, I would often come home to find that my draws had been riffled through & the entire contents of my bedroom had been moved to a different space. She also had a penchant to raid my bedroom cupboard & throw all the ‘stuff’ in my cupboard out onto the floor, complaining that the cupboard was a mess! Which considering she had thrown the entire contents onto the floor in a heap seemed to me to have made any mess I had made in the cupboard considerably worse? I think it was a ritual for her? So there was no other choice for me to hide my uneaten biscuits & I was forced to consume the entire packet, which made me feel extremely unwell. After a couple of attempts as stealing them it put me off Jammie Dodgers for life! Another thing my mother found issue with as she now had a stash of Jammie Dodgers I was not going to eat!

Back to the cafe table; all eyes were on Laurie’s which made his eyes water up & his cheeks go red & shinny, he was never going to talk, I knew that.. Eventually my mother would say, “Okay Laurie, you have a think about it, Natalie what would you like?” Never backward in coming forward as a child, “I want a coke & a toasted cheese sandwich, please.” My mother would sigh & ignore my request, she would then order for me & Laurie & Trevor, my father. She was always trying to control my fathers apatite, as he was a chubby, & a bit of a glutton.

I have often wondered why parents ask you what you want & then just ignore your answer & order you something entirely different? What is the point of asking in the first place? To be honest I still have these conversations with my mum now. She tells me what she thinks I will like or more to the point what I should like, be it a film or a item of clothing, I say “I don’t like it, it is not my thing!” And my mum will say, “Oh you do like it Natalie!” And so the madness goes on!

On this occasion Trevor was allowed cheese on toast a favourite of mine, Laurie would get a chocolate cake mostly or on special occasions like today a chocolate eclair & I was presented with a Battenberg cake, like it or not! A multi-coloured chess board style of cake covered in sickly marzipan. That I could cope with as Trevor mostly would scoff his food & start on mine, but what really irritated me about these dining experiences & does to this day is that Laurie was always given a coke, despite having not asking for one & I was given a bottle of congealed, split sweet & bitter tasting orange juice? Because according to my mother - ‘I liked it!’.

Battenberg, was not my style of cake, either, so my mother moved onto Meringues glued together with whipped cream, I loved the cream but the over sweet Meringues were not my thing. Mum advanced onto donuts, I didn’t mind the ‘donut’ so much despite the fact that they left your face covered in sugar & stuck your fingers together but there was that glob of jam in the middle? Pastries were mostly not my thing either, but better than cake… Mum proceeded onto home made Lemon Meringue pie, this to be fair was a little better, I could eat a bit of the lemon but not the Meringue. If you are wondering why not chocolate cake, well because I I don’t really like chocolate .. either .. I like cheese if I was to have a dessert…. So I was a lost cause to my mother. And not for the last time!

Having finally accepted that I didn’t like all things sweet mum came up with another wheeze to keep cake in my life. On the understanding that “Other people like cake Natalie”. So now it was rude for me not to accept cake! Cakes were presented to me on my birthdays they were my mothers key gifts. Between the village we lived & Windsor was a village called Datchet. …&… Joy of joy’s there was a little tea shop there called The Astricot, run by two very affable old ladies, who in fairness to them had their bosoms in the right place, perhaps they had discovered cross your heart bras? These very talented ladies created wonderful ‘early days’ themed cakes. As far as my mother was concerned it was inspired. So for the next 6 years or so, these sweet old ladies made beautiful Birthday cakes for me mostly & very occasionally for my brother, who had now been exiled to boarding school, which for me was a bit like being bereaved & for him a total disaster… The cakes were inspired, [by my mother], a Ginger Bread house with a ‘smarties’ roof, was the first, I like smarties! Some of the other themes were, a frog band cake, I am not sure why? A ballet cake covered in ballerina’s, I was not so keen on this. A cake with a glass wishing well and one covered in silk flowers to name just a few. My mother just delighted in each & everyone of them, it gave her such enormous pleasure.

The Astricot ladies were also commissioned to make various cakes for the wider family, one being for my Grandmother’s 75th Birthday that was to be held at my aunt Elvira’s house. This cake was to be the centre piece of the celebrations, well that was the view my mother had! This opulent cake was decorated in silk purple flowers, [my mother was going through her purple phase at this time, there were many design phases such she went through such as gold, lime green & her leopard pattern chapter, I will cover these in another blog!], the centre of the flowers on grandma’s cake had black & pearl wired beads as stamens, these flowers were placed delicately on scalloped white royal icing, it weight a ton. At the grand unveiling of Grandma’s cake, to my mother’s utter horror, my younger cousins dived in & started to strip the icing sugar off the cake & consume it, before we had even lit the candles. My mother was furious & I agree with her… Sometimes you can have your cake but you should not eat it … Until it has been a little bit savoured that is the point in cake it is a frivolous sexy temptress, that needs to be admired.

When I had left home, I used to make a Christmas fruit cake every year, starting the preparation nearly 9 months in advance for my mother’s celebrity friends to enjoy on her annual five month holiday in Barbados. The Christmas cake was huge, opulent & drenched in alcohol for flavour, [much like my mother’s wealthy set of friends!] Each year, the cake was sent out via couriers at Christmas to Barbados, as my mother had long since departed & there was no way that she was cutting her baggage allowance for clothes down with a big heavy cake. So the cake was dispatched along with a trolley load of ‘goodies’ purchased from Harrods, this consignment also included a stash of 20 or so cans of tinned corn beef for Alan & Ray the main hosts who despite their wealth & the luxurious surroundings liked simple fare, they also liked a quality Christmas cake. One of Alan & Ray’s guest on many occasions was Bob Monkhouse, a well known English entertainer & good friend to the Barbados crowd, his passion too was the Christmas cake, however his crime one year was to eat the last piece of my Christmas cake, so irritated was Alan that he flounced off to his bedroom & was not seen again until Bob had gone back to his own villa! It is only cake … Right!?

Don’t think that perhaps I don’t like cakes because or that I was just given badly made cakes by elderly grandparents & hapless aunts. In the main I wasn’t, my parents took us to the best patisseries in London & the home counties, plus trips to Devon & Cornwall, in their pursuits of all things cake. However, one disgusting cake memory was my grandmother’s who was a very good ‘war-time’ cook, she had a penchant for making ‘junket’, a sloppy, wobbly creation like a jelly, made from sweetened & flavoured curds of milk. Grandma would colour it in vulgar clashing vegetable dyes, to entertain her many grandchildren, 20 to be precise. Grandma made this ‘slop’ particularly for my cousin Simon as he was her favourite grandchild outside two other male grandchildren, one being my brother. We all had to suffer junket at Grandma’s gatherings most particularly because Simon liked it and we were an obedient lot!

I have continued to make many cakes & I enjoy doing it, my own children have had some spectacularly wild cakes on their Birthdays & other occasions, I have never forced cake on my children, nor did I care if they liked cake or not, they all do by the way! But what I will say is that cake making was my response in some ways to my mothers love of cake. And therefore she inspired me in some way, I hope that she will take credit in that? So on the whole has been a success… So have your cake & eating it … I suppose I should thank my mum?

Please go to Food & Entertaining …. For all recipes on making Victoria Sandwich cakes & variations …. & ENJOY >>>>



Turning ‘Grandma’ into a mud Pie…

‘Pie’ … Grandma is not in this one!

Normal ‘Apparently’ … In our family …

I have thought long and hard about writing about some 'bits' of my life. If I should? .. If I can? Like most people’s lives it has been an interesting journey, particularly with regard to my family and extended family. I have a great memory for detail sometimes the memories are too vivid, however and even better I have a good sense of the bizarre and the humour that is required to go along with it. Some of my stories are very black, but my survival technique is comedy. Turning Grandma into a Mud Pie, is the first of my stories, to be committed to public scrutiny. Here I can introduce you to some of the characters in my life! Enjoy ….. (I hope)…

So welcome to my musings on a mad world …

Turning Grandma into a Mud Pie

Ten years ago, or thereabouts, we were invited to my favourite aunts home, (my ‘fathers’ sister). Her name is Elvira, she has an eccentric rambling house outside Brighton, which rather matches her character. She was going to host a large ‘Jones’ family party, in addition to which, was to include the final resting ceremony of my grandma's ashes and to celebrate what would have been her 100th birthday. Well as near as dam it! To the senior members of the Jones family around about that time … Facts rarely influenced a situation and almost never get in the way of what they want to do and how they want to present a particular set of circumstances …… They just make up the pieces to fit and if they don’t they lie or shout! … To be honest …. I come from a long line of over-reactors! They only worry about reality if and when it happens! To my reckoning it would have actually been grandma’s 103rd or 104th birthday .. But hey-ho!

Grandma passed away at the grand age of 98, whilst me and my husband and our then two children, we now have three, were on holiday in France. We did not attend her cremation, but like most of the family cremations it was held at Golders Green crematorium, all the organisation was as ever controlled by my biological father, known to me as Trevor…… I think I was asked by him to call him Trevor, which is his name, when I was about 13 and it stuck, for many reasons….. Suffice to say that there is a great deal of bad feeling between Trevor and myself!  But when you have money you have control and he was in control of grandma’s cremation arrangements. But Trevor is not the story today that is for another time. At the end of the cremation Elvira was handed the ashes until such time as the family agreed on a final resting place…. The ashes were to be safely stored at Elvira's and her husband Doug’s sprawling overgrown house for the next few years. Or so we thought! 

So, for this momentous family gathering various members of the Jones family clan were shipped in from all over the UK and from far flung corners of the world. The party was to be a two day event…  I did not attend the party on the Saturday as Trevor was attending… He cannot abide to be in my company … And it felt fair to me to give him and his long term partner Hilary some space with his siblings and others. My totally eccentric aunt Elvira kindly invited my mother and I to meet up with the rest of the family on the Sunday, as Trevor would have left the proceedings. So I took my mother and my nine year old daughter to meet grandma’s children, my aunts and uncles and her great aunts and uncles. I thought it would be an exciting occasion for us all … If not illuminating… 

Grandma I was told had thirteen pregnancies and seven surviving children, five boys and two girls. Which, in itself is quite an achievement as my grandparent’s contempt for each other was so extreme that they could not bear to be in the same room together, in their own home, so as not to come across each other, with the exception of bedtime, she had the front room he had the back room… When they were out together in public there was a heartfelt and palpable atmosphere of utter disgust between them…  One of my earliest and most shocking memories of my grandma Doris Margaretta Jones was that she would regularly have outbursts of a varying pitch and level at my grandfather publically. Saying in response to any comments he may have made…. “He makes me spit! He makes me SPIT!” She would during the day repeat this comment with unfettered distain toward him… As a young child this was quite shocking and alarming, as to me grandma was a pillar of society and the matriarch of the family, whom I felt safe around, which in my childhood was rare at times. To me she had the highest moral values. It was out of character to ever imagine that grandma would lower herself to spit… Like a navvy in the street! Simply shocking! … Although being the type of child I was, I was kind of excited to see her do it and wonder what effect it might have on my mother’s sensibilities … Wicked child I am!  I can confirm that to the best of my knowledge grandma never did spit and over the many years I just came to accept that is what she said when grandpa was around..… Another childhood dream of seeing her spit was dashed!

It was a further source of equal bewilderment to me that grandpa, with equal regularity, when we were all out, in a restaurant, in an airport or any public place, he would hold up his hand and point out the signs to the Ladies toilets? …Raising his pointed finger at the sign of the WC and booming at my grandmother ….. “Doris there’s the Lavatory, ….. THERE…  The lavatory Doris …The lavatory’s are there Doris.” I realise now, it was his way to irritate her and embarrass her…. But as a child it seemed very strange that grandma could not see and read the signs for herself and why would she not be equally interested in where the restaurant was, for example? I mean she was partial to a cup of tea?… Never once did he not do this …. He would then slide up behind me, grab my arm with the most painful iron like grip, which made my legs buckle under the pressure… And hiss his laugh in my ear through the front of what I think were his dentures, this gesture always ended in a quiet throaty whistle…  Her obvious response was that he made her spit! But still, to my irritation, no moisture was ever forthcoming! 

Growing up in this strange world, finally at the age of about four I realised that my grandparents could not stand the sight of each other but were tied to one another in some form or other … Possibly because it was a generational thing … ? They were never to my knowledge kind to each other, except on two occasions, Grandpa was knocked over on his bicycle on the North Circular Road, on arriving at hospital he was given a pain killer for his injuries; unfortunately he was allergic to the drug and he had a major stroke, which rendered him unable to speak … He would stutter, stammer and shake, however I do remember on occasions he was able, under his breath to hiss the audible words, at grandma .. Bitch and Fuck … At times of his frustration … Despite this …. She sat with him day after day, for over a year, such was the determination of my grandmother to coax him back to health. Writing endless sentences and doing sums for him to copy and say to her out loud. 

She would put a heavy glass ashtray in front of him to pick up, to try and reverse the paralysis in his arm and hand. After a year or so …. I think in order to get away from her he made a full recovery… He wanted to get back down the bus depot where he was a bus conductor and where there were men and free whisky! She had done her job and he was off her hands again. The second time there was some kindness from him was when he was dying and she was at his hospital bed and he wanted her to hold his hand …. She refused … 

For the party grandma’s ashes must be found … So the search was on … To put you in the picture and describe Elvira’s and Uncle Doug’s wonderfully shambolic and rambling home. You approach the property via a joint driveway shared with the large old house next door which has been converted to an old people’s home, their house is on the right as you approach. This Sussex property has beautiful views over the adjoining countryside. The house has a large number of rooms on the ground floor, on the second floor is a more open planned area, stuffed full of their life’s accessories, bits and bobs. To the back of the house there is a large acreage of overgrown scrappy lawn that has been vaguely tamed into walkways by a ride on lawn mower, to be frank it is really too much for two people in their seventies to handle, but this is the way they want to live their lives.  To the left of the house, on a lower level is a 1970’s style building housing a very old and rather frightening swimming pool, with water that has more than its fair share of shades of green and in one corner looks slightly like a swamp.. Beyond that is further bumpy scrubland lawn with a five foot hedge denoting the perimeter of their property to its neighbours, the old people’s home. However the hedge just stops and you can walk around it onto the neighbouring lawn. To the right of their property there are a number of scattered outhouses one of which is a dance studio, where my aunt has been a very successful dance professor. There are many glasshouses scattered around the main house, that are filled to the brim with overgrowing plants that have pushed their way out through smashed windows. Other outhouses are filled to bursting with more relics from their past, Doug who was in the film industry, has containers of scripts and reels of films billowing out of boxes in these storage huts. Under the house is my aunt’s collection, thirty plus years of The Telegraph newspaper, bundled into piles tied with string. Elvira needs these newspapers just in case she may require an article contained in these precious documents, she has a penchant for cutting out snippets of articles and sending bits of news to you in order to demonstrate a particular point or to inform you of something you might not have known or understood, in a previous life!  I have received a large number of cuttings over the years as have the rest of the family. Nowadays Elvira sends the information via email. Interestingly the emails arrive in the most unusual staccato format that is sometimes difficult to follow, she uses stars, exclamation marks and full stops like some people use emoji.  Without exception Elvira always signs off her notes or emails with; ‘So busy’ or ‘In haste’. Both ‘sign off’, comments over the years have really irritated and infuriated her brother Trevor. Because he likes to think that he is the more important and busier than anyone else! Families and their foibles … Don’t you just love ‘em! It makes me laugh!

Back to the party …. As ever with all families there is always a back story, ours is a black comedy drama. Grandma's final resting was agreed to be in the back garden of Elvira and Doug’s house. A marquee had been erected and vast amounts of food had been ordered from Marks and Spencer to see us all through the weekend, as Elvira now refuses to cook. Grandma's seven children and their respective wives and partners and some of the eighteen or so grandchildren and any vague relatives with the similar surname were wheeled in for the event. The Jones have a strange ability and need to find distant relatives to enthuse over, I think this is mostly as they don’t particularly like their actual close family who have seen them for whom they really are! Therefore new shinny relatives are always handy and welcome at any event. Having the common surname Jones you can imagine we have a lot of potential new family members to choose from! 

The final resting place for Grandma was to be under a newly planted tree, by the hedge adjoining the neighbouring property. The placing of the semi-mature tree turned out to be significant and was to be paid for by Trevor. Uncle Doug had confided to Trevor that the position of the tree was critical, as he and Aunt Elvira like to sunbathe in the nude, this had sometimes confused the old people in the nursing home next door. Particularly the Captain, who resided at the home, and whose window looked down on to my aunt and uncles back garden. Confused or not the Captain sometimes with other occupants of the home would wonder over into the garden, to join the fun, possibly in the hope of something more than your average cup of sugar? If you get my drift? ..

I suppose, if you think about it, sometimes the days in an old people’s home must drag a bit so the occupants must look for other ways to be amused? Elvira and Doug provided perfect adult entertainment in this regard! …. So to avoid unwanted guests the tree needed to be placed in a precise location. Some of Trevor's many staff were dispatched prior to the ceremony to plant the ‘modesty’ tree.

On the day we were there, drinks were flowing well and my uncles were making a great deal of fuss over our daughter who is always rather pleased to be the centre of attention and enjoying the fuss, and why not! As ever in the UK the weather was living up to the “not as summery as it should be” factor, in fact it was quite chilly and there was a hell of a wind. So instead of eating in the marquee, which was bellowing in the strong breeze, we were to eat in the main house. One of my cousins, Elvira’s child, was entertaining me, telling me all the gossip about various members of the family and all the goings on at the party the day before. Really is that not the point of these meetings … The gossip? My cousin told me to look at the fireplace, “we could not find grandma’s ashes anywhere in the house or in the out buildings!” Elvira had put grandma somewhere safe but she could not remember where? Therefore Elvira had had no choice and was forced to scrape out the ashes from the fire place for the event until she could lay her hands on the real grandma! I told you at the beginning of this story … facts or reality rarely affects what the Jones do! Totally irreverent of both us, but it added to the humour of what was to come! And it was most probably true!

After lunch we were all forced out of the house to undertake the main event and indulge in a little mud pie making! My beautiful mother dressed as always like a supermodel was asked by Elvira to make her way to the back of the marquee, where my mother came across a wheel barrow of soil and another wheelbarrow filled with dried manure! Elvira holding grandma’s ashes in a canteen in one hand and a desert spoon in the other explained to my mother that she had worked out, presumably into a kitchen bowl a night or two before? That each of the family had two and a half scoops of grandma’s ashes, to mix. The plan was to scoop out your allotted amount of grandma into a Tupperware box then take two spoon full’s of manure from the wheelbarrow deposit that on top of grandma and then sprinkle an appropriate amount of soil of the top of the mixture! Yes really!! There was a watering can on hand so you could pour some water over the grandma mixture and combine her into a smooth ‘roux’.  Finally, the wet human slop was to be deposited in another wheelbarrow located nearby, which had a net covering it, containing the contents of the day’s before ceremony of grandma’s “bake-off” mix congealed together by other members of the family!  … Quite literally turning grandma into a mud pie! 

I could tell something was up as I could hear shrieks of hysterical laughter from my mother, there is no stopping her once she gets started, and then you could hear loud chastising from my aunt who was trying to control my mother’s guffawing. To my aunts horror and my mother’s lack of reverence in the face of the ensuing ludicrous task. My mother’s attempts to deposit two and half scoops of grandma into a Tupperware box was being hampered by the wind and the ashes were being blown away. My mother, due to her violent laughter attack was not quick enough to secure grandma’s ashes under the manure and soil and slosh her with a gloop of water.... So as a result some parts of grandma became unattached, blown away by the wind and are now residing somewhere over the Sussex countryside, a lucky escape for that bit of grandma if you ask me!

When it came to mine and my daughters turn .. I went all haughty and said that I could not be involved in turning grandma into a mud pie, the idea was quite ridiculous! In hindsight, writing this, I think this was wrong .. And I should get a life!  Perhaps grandma would have found it quite acceptable ….. And funny … Let’s face it some memorials are boring!

The interesting thing was that once we had a barrow load of grandma’s mud pie mix. It sort of just sat there and no further progress was made on that day…. We just got chatting and the scattering of the ashes got put to one side! Grandma was immortalised into a mud pie, so I guess she could wait, other things were going on. 

A bit later, having gone into the house to hide from the weather, I had an interesting if not surreal conversation in the kitchen with my aunts and uncles, with the exception of Elvira and Doug, they took me to one side to discuss on where my aunt kept the breakfast cereal? Not exactly a scintillating conversation, but each to their own! My aunts and uncles, knowing how close I am to Elvira told me of her habit of repatriating the breakfast cereal back to the bottom cupboard in the kitchen, they were all taking it in turns to put the cereal into one of the top cupboards. However each and every morning, the cereal would find its way back into the under counter cupboard! … As you might imagine, I could not quite grasp the importance of where the breakfast cereal was housed, I mean did it really matter? But they were most insistent that I discuss the matter with her! Delving further to see what the actual problem was, why does it matter where the cereal is kept? Well you would think!!?? It transpired that Elvira has always kept the breakfast cereal in the lower cupboard… For my Uncle Doug’s delight and personal enjoyment!

Then the penny dropped … It emerged that my aunt does not wear underwear in the mornings a long standing arrangement between her and her husband, she wears the equivalent of what we would call a baby doll nighty, I guess having being a sex kitten of the 1960/1970, why not??.. Incidentally, to her credit at the opening of the premiere of the film Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton, produced by her husband July 1970, Elvira knocked Princess Margret off the front pages of the newspapers at the premiere  … So beautiful is she? 

However back to #cerealgate. In the mornings when Elvira enters the kitchen, to her siblings and respective wives horror, who are happily sitting at the table eating breakfast …. Elvira bends down, full ‘flash’ to get her breakfast cereal!??… What can I say??? And indeed that was my question to my aunts and uncles….. What do you want me to say to her? The general consensus was that I am close to my aunt and I would be able to make her see sense … Christ this is my family, no one sees sense! But okay … I will give it a shot …!

Elvira came into the kitchen to collect some more food so I seized the moment and took a deep breath. Whilst my uncle and aunts shuffled conspiratorially behind me to see what the response would be! “Elvira!” I gesticulated toward the assembled members peering on with childlike interest. And they shuffled back slightly, again! “Elvira why do you or Doug keep moving the cereal from the top cupboard where your guests are putting it, back to the under counter bottom cupboard? Did you realise they can all see …. Well, em see your naked bottom?” She turned around with condiments in her hands and stared at me, seemingly with her mind elsewhere, so I continued, as if to try and point out the obvious … “these are after all - your brothers?” Without even a blink she shrugged her shoulders, glanced at the assembled crowd and just confirmed.“ Oh they never see my front bottom they only ever see my back bottom, I do it for Doug!” And off she went out of the kitchen … To stunned silence … What can you really say? Well I am sure we can say a lot …. But I suppose the nub of the matter is that it was their home and she can have her cereal in whatever cupboard she wants to put it … I guess?? …. Each to their own! … I turned to my aunts and uncles, picked up my glass of wine and attempted to copy my aunt’s aplomb  .. Suggesting that they admired the ceiling in the kitchen when Elvira was deciding whether to have Rice Crispys or Co-Co Pops! What can you do! … Clearly they are nudists!

As I said, grandma, or what was left of grandma thanks to my mother’s hysteria was never on that day, consigned to the ground as on this family occasion talking and musing on life had taken over and the weather became windy and dull so grandma remained quietly in her wheelbarrow… As it turned out this happened to be a good thing … As some weeks later the ‘modesty’ tree which had already been planted with a hole left to one side for grandma’s ashes… Died before the ashes had been scattered! It had been planted over a Nissan hut which had restricted its root system and killed it off. I have to say another bodge-up by Trevor. 

So some weeks later another tree was purchase and delivered to the house for replanting in the same location… Two more Polish workmen were dispatched to my aunt’s house to undertake the planting of this fine new specimen. However before planting the Nissan hut needed to be dug out first, as you can imagine a fairly major job, particularly by hand! These poor men dug and dug, extricating chunks of concrete as they went. The weather had improved, it was now a heat wave and the sun was shining down upon their backs, making it not only back breaking work, but they ran with sweat in the heat. They dug and dug and dug over a number of days.… Eventually they were close to the end of the job.. Back filling the hole with manure and soil ready to plant the tree. The hole was deep enough at this point for the men to stand with just their head and shoulders above ground level…. 

In the house there was a knock at the door and it was Elvira’s teenage granddaughter; who had been taking a student gap year and had turned up to see her grandparents. To see her granddaughter was a great excitement to Elvira. She wanted to show her the progress of the final resting place of grandma, which her granddaughter had missed due to being abroad … In the ensuing excitement Elvira on the way out of the kitchen door to the garden, grabbed a canteen that was on the shelf, proclaiming to her granddaughter that she too could be part of grandma’s final resting place as these were grandma’s ashes … Elvira ran toward the two workman, slogging away, digging in the hole, glimmering with sweat … And in a moment of supreme dramatic gesture, ripped of the lid of the canister and threw the contents into the air directly above where the two workman were digging, both who had stood to watch what Elvira was doing…. Too late to get out of the way, the men were open mouthed at this performance, yes grandma’s ashes flew into the air in a blacken smoke only to land on the sweaty workman … Sticking and clogging to their wet skin …. The men spat and gasped and spat again trying to rid themselves of the dried ashes of grandma … Scraping at their bodies trying to brush off the dried powdery residue of grandma off their shiny wet bodies …. 

To this day I am unsure if the two workman were fully aware of what was thrown at them, really not nice … But a number of things spring to mind? Firstly, I do wonder at the quantity of ashes grandma managed to create, she was only a small woman. There was the measured out number of spoonful’s at the earlier family party occasion and a further canteen of ashes thrown at these two unsuspecting workman. And secondly, I feel somewhat gratified, as grandma had spent most of her life announcing that she wanted to spit and to my knowledge never managed to carry out this threat.. So at least in death she managed to make someone else spit and I secretly think that she would have been pleased… 

As a footnote to this story, some years later when my uncle Doug had been diagnosed with a mild form of Alzheimer’s. I called the house to speak to Elvira and Doug answered the phone.. We got chatting and he advised me to his delight that Elvira was riding on the lawn mower … Presumably mowing the lawn? He then told me that she was knicker-less! This is not the sort of thing he would have normally said to his niece under ordinary circumstances therefore I was desperately thinking of ways I could divert this type of conversation and so to speak … Get him off topic!! …. Then he announced that he was sitting watching Elvira with his Percy … To this day it makes my toes curl.. I mean what the hell do you say to that? I was stammering over my words ..  Anything to move on with a different conversation …. One of those dying moments… I carried on chatting about whatever came into my mind other than my uncles Percy! … Then over the line I heard a meow…. “What is that Doug?” … “It’s Percy my new cat … He was a stray and he has adopted me…” Well as you can imagine not only a welcome relief to me … But a lovely moment .. As Percy gave them both such delicious joy in the years to come and Percy, I am guessing had no problem with where the cereals were kept!  

I guess all families are like this right! ?? ….