I grew up watching
my grandmother go up and down flights of stairs all day long when she and
Grandpa ran The Old Globe pub in Rogerstone, just outside Newport in South
Wales.
Her stamina always amazed me. She
carried crates, served behind the bar, and, the thing I remember most, rose at
5am every morning to make fresh Cornish pasties for pub lunches.
On the one occasion I stayed with
her, when Grandpa was ill in hospital, we shared the same bed and I recall
three things: the false teeth she put in the glass at her bedside before
retiring (I was fascinated – I thought only dentists removed teeth); her
kneeling on the floor at the side of the bed to say her prayers; and the early
morning that was ‘pastie o’clock’. She had barely been in bed five minutes
after cleaning up after last orders.
She had always been the same. At
14, she gave up her job as a photographer’s assistant to wash clothes for the
huge family of nine. To me, knowing this when I was young, it was a slavish
existence. She must have worked eighteen hours a day until she retired when
Grandpa died in 1971. Fifty years. That’s well over 350,000 hours. At least.
I lay there one night, on a
sleepover when Grandpa was in hospital, listening to the mixer (good old
Kenwood) stir the potatoes and onions and, when I finally got out of bed, I
marvelled at the rows of golden, ribbed Cornish pasties on their steel trays
that Grandma carried down to the bar to put in the ‘snacks’ container that kept
them warm on the counter. And at 64, when she retired, she was still bounding
up and down those stairs like a youngster.
When we, as a family, visited
every weekend (Mum helped out behind the bar), I collected tops from the Courage
beer bottles – numerous bright colours (orange, blue, yellow) surrounding a
cockerel in the middle – and was ecstatic when Grandma gave me an empty cigar
box in which to put my collection of plastic jewellery. I still have the
Babycham glass she gave me with Bambi prancing across the front.
On Bank Holidays, Dad would take
us to the temporary fair in the field opposite the pub. Dad always won a
coconut and, one afternoon, won two goldfish – one for my brother Nigel and one
for me. Nigel’s fish, Fred, died, when Mum fed him eight oxygen tablets when he
appeared to be struggling to breathe. In the end, I suspect it was the wind
that killed him.
My fish, Horace, had an
inauspicious start in life when the bag we carried him back in burst, and he
spent a good few minutes drunk as we tried to scoop him up from the spilt
Guinness on the pub floor. At least he lasted longer than Fred, so it must be
true what they say about the benefits of stout.
I remember every Saturday
afternoon, when Nigel and I were deposited downstairs, emerging from the terror
of the living room where we had to watch Dr Who in the dark (apparently, it
saved electricity), to be offered our choice of chocolate from the sweet
counter in the bar.
I have thought of Grandma so many
times since her death in 1989, a short while after her eldest daughter, Audrey,
and a short while before my beloved father in 1990. I recall never hear her
once complain, though her life was non-stop work, morning till night, seven
days a week. She brought up three daughters, including my mum, Val, the eldest,
and the youngest, Barbara, through a war, looked after Grandpa when he was
dying of cancer, and dealt with horrendous money problems not of her making,
following his death.
When I started out in my late
twenties in Fleet Street, writing five TV columns a week “live” (this was in
the days before videos and DVDs), living on five hours’ sleep a night for four
years, I always had at the forefront of my mind that to survive in life, you
had to have a strong work ethic, and nowhere had I witnessed it more powerfully
than in my grandmother.
To this day, that work ethic, and
her fortitude and spirit are central to what keeps me going when times get
tough for me (and I work just as hard now as I did when I started out). She had
it tougher; she really did. But she loved her work, loved her family, and,
despite the hardship, loved life.
At her funeral, the minister
said: ‘Some people live dying; others die living.’ Grandma was the latter. And,
thanks to her, I will do that, too.
Hopefully, not for a while yet.
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