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July 19, 2007
The Grannification Of Galina
If I fluff a step during a Galina gig, I point at the imaginary grease spot on the floor of the stage and take a random punter to task for having spilled something. It’s an irrational tick I lifted from my Nan Atkinson, aka Nancy Ak, muse for the poem:
Where's Nancy Ak?
She've gone for a wee out the back.
Now I fear I may have brought a curse upon me and be turning into her.
Last night I knocked a cup a cup into the sink and broke it. In the dark, I managed without cutting myself to scoop out all the glass, wrap it in newspaper, and put it in the bin. Just now in the glare of mid-morning, I was sorting cardboard for recycling and cut my lip on the lid of a Cuppa Soup box.
Similarly, sometime in the late sixties my Aunt Kay gave Nancy Ak a lift to Bingo. On the way down the very steep street that is bisected by the wall of the church, Kay’s brakes failed. She made a quick decision to turn left at the bottom of the hill and coast till the car stopped. She explained this calmly to Nancy.
“So, nothing to worry about, now mum. Just going to turn the car, the road’s easily wide enough there and…let go of the steering wheel, now mum. Open your eyes. No, we’re not going to die so there’s no need for you to go screaming that we are. And it doesn’t matter that you haven’t got clean knickers on for when the ambulance men come and scrape us- what a thing to say! - off the graveyard wall. Let go...!!!"
They hit the church wall. But neither of them was so much as scratched, let alone scrapeable. Mrs. Jones came out of her house at the noise and offered to take Nancy indoors for a cup of tea.
“Be good for you, mum, for the shock”, said Kay, knowing that Nancy wouldn’t want to go in Mrs. Jones’s.
“I’ll have it out here, thank you very much,” Nancy said, “I can feel that the fresh air is doing me good.”
Mrs Jones went to make the tea.
“Still about the bunting, is it?” Kay asked Nancy.
“Yes.”
My grandfather had been in charge of decorations for the coronation street party, and Mrs. Jones had taken against the shade of red he used for the bunting. “More pimp than pomp”, legend has it Mrs. Jones said. She hung her own bunting out of her front bedroom window. “Eyes averted from that treasonous tat”, Nancy had admonished Kay and my father whenever they passed.
Mrs. Jones came out with Nancy’s tea.
“Here you are, now. Made it good and strong I have with lots of sugar for the shock. Miracle you weren’t killed.”
Nancy took the tea and sipped it while staring disapprovingly at Mrs. Jones. Thus, she seriously misaimed one saucer to mouth manoeuvre and chipped some enamel off her right front tooth.
“Ever the bloody trouble maker, Carys Jones”, she said.
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