It would be my nans birthday today if she were still with us as an 11-year-old, I would catch the bus from Grangetown just over the river from our house to Splott on the 7a bus it was an adventure. I just cannot tell you how much she meant to me in particularly growing up in my youth.
Cardiff City Council were beginning to knock down the streets around her at one point she and my aunty were the only people living in the street and the surrounding area. They were even knocking the street down before she left. I love going down her house if the chippy was open we would get the biggest bag of chips I have seen. A bonus she would always give me the change and pretty much any shop we when into.
I remember mum when to a wedding and left my brother and me with Nan overnight. There was no electricity has the meter was broken into with a member of the household the prime suspect. So we spent the night in the dark in the living room in front of a blazing fire. In the morning, she nipped out to get something for breakfast and came home with ice cream, only my Nan.
She once took me shopping for a pair of shoes for school and I talked her into a pair of platform shoes much to my mum’s annoyance but the story with nan was you could push her a bit but don’t step over the line. A beautiful memory we when on one of these street trips to the seaside totally out of character for her but we were soon heading for Porthcawl.
On arrival, she couldn’t find her purse we had no money so we spent the day wandering around hungry but I would have never change that day. When we got back, she offered to walk me home, which was a fair distance, and fairly late instead of sending me home on the bus. A few years later I realised she didn’t leave her purse at home or lost it she just didn’t have any money.
A few years later, I upset mum when I told her something she was not expecting. I liked to mitch from school to me it was a part of my schooling experience and Nan was caught up in it in a small way. We mitched relatively close to home one day Nan spotted me and some friends on her way to mums. I went over to tell her a pack of lies, which she was very unlikely to believe anyway. She did drop me some cash for the chippy. All I could think about for the rest of the day the bollicking I was going to get when I got home.
Guess what! I walked into nothing, which puzzled me until I realised why, because Nan couldn’t have told her and then she kept making the diversion on the off chance I was about and drop me some cash for my dinner. Then a few years after leaving school Mum, Nan and me where having one of those remember chats and I mistakenly brought up the Nan and mitching story and you could see she (mum) was upset as the room when quiet.
My guilt surrounding her death still hurts the fact I hadn’t seen her in three years digs deep. Every time I asked, mum how Nan was she would tell me she was fine so her death hit me hard. I was full of anger when I was told she had gone and the easy target was mum, which lasted a moment. Later mum and I discuss my feelings at the time, but really, it was my anger at myself.
No one was stopping me visiting her I just never thought she would die, stupid I know, but I did. The only person who could do that was Nan herself. You could knock on the door and Aunty Lydia you would ask, “Is Nan in” then Nan would shout“, Tell him I am not here”. It was a kind of no enter sign she would put up from time to time not just to me.
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