Monday 3rd March
Well happily I've got the weekend's night shifts out of the way - only to be left with a stinking cold. It started on Saturday night, one of those tickly sore throats, and then, come Sunday night, it was a full blown stinker. So instead of going over to see Mum, I'm stuck at home nursing it. You should see my kitchen worktop - it's a scattering of Ibuprofen and Echinacea. I seem to have done nothing but drink cups of tea...
Still I did make it up to my local post office. It's actually a treat to go there instead of the Galleries, have a bit of a chat with the staff, who are nice and friendly, instead of the blank faces and nervous stares of the one's in town. Actually I do feel sorry for them, it's not their fault they got stuck with that system. It was something of an exciting trip - my little packets were making their way to Oslo, and to the Channel Islands rather than say Slough or Midlothian!
Anyhow after that, I popped in to the local store on Sandy Park Road rather than trek down to Sainsbury's - I got a small pack of mince, and I thought I'd do a mini spag bol for supper. It's cold out, and a bit of spag bol always makes you feel a bit better doesn't it? Got myself a big bottle of Lucozade too. It'll save on trips to the kettle, and it's something I've been drinking since the year dot. Mum used to buy it when we were kids, and back then, we called it Granny's beer. Jo and I didn't have grandparents when we were growing up, they had died before we were born. But we had substitute grannies - Mrs Knight who lived over in Moseley, I remember trips to see her very vividly. She was a sweet old lady who did the most wonderful knitting and crochet work, she taught Jo how to knit and I'm pretty sure she probably had two or three goes if not more with me, but I didn't have the patience for it at that time.
Anyhow, we had another sort of pseudo grandparent. This was old Mrs Knight, who lived with other relatives. Now this old lady was so incredibly old (and ok, I'm remembering this through the eyes of a child) she was too old to get out of bed. I seem to remember being taken to see her every time we visited, and it was like stepping back in time. Now this is the 60's, and she must have been 90 or so (and on that point I'm not kidding, she genuinely was in her 90s) and I think she must have been the woman we knew as Granny Knight's mother in law. Or possibly her sister's mother in law? It was very complex! Anyhow, it was this, very elderly granny, who drank granny's beer, and she would give us little glass fulls when we visited! Tiny little glassfuls of Lucozade, which of course back then, almost had a medicinal nature. Mother fed it to us when we were in bed with our chicken pox, and measles.
Old Mrs Knight lived in a miraculous room. It was full of lace, and flowered wallpaper, and she reigned from a large bed, under a big bay window. I seem to remember it being full of photographs, and she had nurses fluttering around her. She wasn't sick you understand, she was just very very old. She was so old, she wore a lace bedcap and jacket, and as far as I was concerned, she was a Victorian. Somehow, at six or seven years old, I knew that this old woman was a Victorian, someone must have told me that when she was born, Queen Vic was still on the phone. You had to be terribly terribly quiet when you went to see her, and if she was asleep, you had to creep out. And there was absolutely no running about, or playing of any kind in Old Granny Knights room. I've got no idea when she died, I don't even remember being told that she had died, or even noticing very much when we no longer visited, but that probably had more to do with my father, who was prone to arguing with his family, and probably stopped speaking to them, consequently we no longer visited. But Granny Knight became the older woman who lived in Moseley, and was more like a real grandmother anyway, because although she was old, she was mobile and live and taught us stuff! It'd be quite interesting to be able to sort all of these memories out with someone who knew more about it all - have to see if I can remember the next time I see Nick. He's my older brother and he was quite a bit older, so he'll probably know all about it!
