Once Saturday morning TV was over it was time to head into Blyth to peruse the bustling open air market then on to my dad's parents' house in time for the latter part of Dicky Davis' World of Sport. This often featured a spot of wrestling in the larger-than-life sweaty shape of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks then the monotonous tones of the classified football results. My grandma did the Pools and marked down the football results religiously before treating us to a delicious spread of corned beef pie, coleslaw, sandwiches, cakes and biscuits. She and my grandad won second prize on a Spot the Ball competition once to their great delight, having spent hours each week scientifically calculating precisely in the grainy photograph where the ball was. I often slept over on a Saturday night, sometimes with my elder cousin with whom I had great fun, sneaking about in the night hunting for midnight feasts and playing shops or buying penny mix-ups from Pops' mobile sweet van during the day. When it was just me I'd cosy up with Grandma in her very feminine flowery bedroom that smelled of roses and lavender or lily-of-the-valley talcum powder. I adored being next to Grandma, reading Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers and St Clare's books after the excitement of trying to decipher the convoluted clues of Ted Rogers on 3-2-1. The house didn't have central heating but an electric blanket and hot water bottle kept us snug. The toilet was downstairs and Grandma kept an old-fashioned Chamber Pot in her bedroom in case of emergency. In the morning I watched engrossed as Grandad started up the coal fire, clearing the hearth, building up wads of newspaper, firelighters and coal and working the licking flames with a metal bleazer.
On Sundays we visited my other Grandparents who had an amazingly eclectic spare room we affectionately called The Junk Room. Here I played happily for hours with my other cousin while Songs of Praise, Antiques Roadshow, Hart to Hart and Bullseye kept the adults occupied on the TV downstairs. My maternal grandmother was a star baker in the highly competitive local Mother's Union and her home-made bakes were presented each week on tiered cake stands with paper doilies - triangular sandwiches, pies, pickles, baked egg custard and pease pudding, loose tea poured through a strainer, milk in a dainty china jug, butter in a ceramic dish and our own special little cups and saucers with Tom and Jerry and The Diddy Men painted on them (my cousin still has hers!). My Grandad tended to fall asleep in his chair then later claim he was just resting his eyes. Fair play to him he could tell you exactly how much was quoted on Antiques Roadshow for an early 19th century Cameo brooch while appearing to be sound asleep after which he'd rattle out a few tunes on his cabinet organ, singing in a low bass voice "Old Man River" or when he'd had enough of us "Time to go home, time to go home - Andy is waving goodbye". On the way back home we stopped off at Tait's shop on Bedlington bank to buy a quarter of Blackcurrant & Liquorice or Rhubarb & Custards as the final sugar fix of the weekend. Years later there was huge excitement when a painting my Grandad took to the local Antiques Roadshow in a tatty Presto's carrier bag was animatedly gathered round by the experts who declared it a rare Louis Leray original worthy of auction. This was a genuine high point for my Grandad - he had a lovely crinkly eyed smile and I can just see him chuckling as he recounted the moment they all realised the painting that someone with a look of Compo from Last of the Summer Wine had brought in was actually worth something.
My paternal Grandma was very superstitious and a bit psychic. Not only did she love football pools, Spot the Ball and Bingo, she also enjoyed Fortune Telling, including the meaning of dreams. Grandma wrote her own down in a Dreambook and once dreamed my dad was flying a plane while holding a briefcase. So when dad won a competition to go on a flight she was cock-a-hoop that she'd predicted this in her dream. She did tea-leaf reading, kept lucky horseshoes, elves, pixies - even a lucky potato - and was a demon with a bottle of Dettol. I still love the smell of cleaning products like Zoflora and Dettol which make me think of her immediately and smile. Grandma struggled with her hearing. Her hearing aid whistled and picked up local radio periodically. Maybe that helped with predictions but it also led to many a kettle boiling dry on the stove as she presumed the whistling was just her hearing aid. One weekend when we arrived for tea she said to my mam "I've kept your contact lens that you lost last week" and dug out a wad of kitchen roll. My mam was confused - while she regularly lost her contact lenses (often putting them both in one eye) on this occasion they were both in the correct eyes. What had actually been wrapped in kitchen roll for a week turned out to be part of a fish eye from some fish Grandma had cooked for supper the previous week.
Happy Mother's Day to all the grandmothers and mother-figures who leave their indelible loving memories with us over the years.
Kettle boiling dry - only woman I know who could burn out a whistling kettle loved her so much she was amazing xx