Today it became apparent, even to me, that my parents, on their return, will be absolutely outraged at the state of the garden if we don’t do something about it. Despite the fact that our garden is at best one of the very worst for streets about, they continue to be insistent that the grass is cut every two weeks. This only exposes the terrible bald lumps and divots all over the thing, especially when I operate the lawnmower - which I did today, out of necessity. It was to little effect, although the churned turf in the centre now nicely matches the crater where my father spent five sweaty hours hauling out a perfectly happy rose bush by the roots with a trowel and a length of twine with the intention of replacing it with a clematis. Predictably, he never did, and now we have a barren waste land of stumps and forbidding dry soil, with the odd thistle. However, to effect all of this, I had to visit my grandparents, to borrow their lawnmower, because ours is just a tardis with blades on it. I do love visiting my grandparents:

Gran: I’m pig sick of that Elsie*. Do you know what she did yesteray? She threatened me, you know! Said she’s had jujitsu lessons. I was only trying to give her her eardrops. I wouldn’t care, she’s 93 next month. And I don’t know what I’m going to get her - she never eats them York Fruits**, she just puts them under the stairs. I saw them. She must have thirty boxes under there. Are you listening to me, Isiah Johnson?

(Isiah Johnson is not listening one little bit, but passionately regaling to his three female granddaughters with a diatribe on the innumerable shortcomings of our sex).

Grandad (unbuttoned of shirt, with a mouth full of pickled onion, waggling a fork): Women, without exception, talk a lot of bloody rubbish. If you want something made a hash of, get a woman to do it! Her, her there (here, he indicates his wife with that sceptre of judgement, the cheese-encrusted fork), she dunted the car into a paint wagon yesterday!
I: What did the painter say?
Grandad: Intrigued you that, has it? Well, she didn’t stay, to find out, did she? She came straight home, and says to me, she says, Isy, I’ve dunted the car. I says, woman, you’re a bloody waste of space.
Gran (winking at us): You’ve got a bit of cheese stuck to your face. It’s like eating your tea with Tarzan.***
Grandad (smearing it across his cheek): Thank-you, dear. Our Donna, when she was a girl, when she used to give me cheek, I used to tell her, I used to say ‘Get up them bloody stairs, or I’ll bite yer lugs off!’ (Here he chews meditatively, as if lost in the memory). Gladys, this bread is like the sole of me shoe. You wouldn’t know a good bit of bread from your bloody foot, do you know that?

Later on, sitting in the subdued quiet of a company of blood relatives who have little left to say to each other and less desire to think of anything, my Grandmother looks across at my Grandfather, who is in a be-slippered, contented heap in his armchair, gazing fondly at the carpet. With calculated and deliberate venom and the light of the electric fire catching in her eyes, she folds up her magazine, turns to him and says:

“Just look at the state of you.”

And I think that says it all really.

*It may be just as well to explain who Elsie is. Elsie is A cantankerous one-time friend of my grandmothers whose reason long since mouldered, along with her flat, clothing and ability to look after herself. Whilst she can just about totter to the shops to purchase her weekly 5 litres of ice cream, three tins of corned beef and some packets of Smash instant mashed potato, it has fallen largely to my grandparents as the only people in the street she hasn’t absolutely alienated to look after her. Every so often she will become inebriated on sherry, and wobble over the street to knock at the door and shower whoever answers it with abuse.

**These seem to be a sort of Liqueur filled fruit pastille, in an upmarket box. I have never known anybody purchase them except my grandmother, who, despite much consternation over what to buy Elsie every year, always turns to them as a last resort.

***I’m still quite unsure as to what she meant by that - perhaps a reference to his shirt being undone rather than the bit of cheese.