Granny Annie was my Mam’s, Mam. She lived in the room above us. My Grandfather was dead. All I knew about him was he’d worked for the electricity board and was an illegal street corner bookie and moneylender.

Granny said to commend him, that he never spat in the street, from which I concluded he only spat in the house, for hygiene sake probably into the fire. There was an awful lot of spitting done then. You don’t see the ‘No Spitting’ signs on buses anymore. It seems disgusting to us nowadays that people then needed to be told not to spit. We know it’s a foul habit.

Of course, spit is biodegradable unlike chewing gum, we now live in a maculate world just look down and count the spots.

Granny slept in a double bed that came out of a huge cupboard and stood on iron legs. The cupboard had two very shiny doors with those strange half and half veneers that look like the folded paper ink blots used in the Rorschach psychiatric test. I must have been very disturbed because all I could see in the swirling grain was two devils swinging two babies round by their legs. She was completely unconcerned by them because the bed was correctly placed for her version of what we now call Feng Shui. This dictated that the foot of the bed should not face the door; her bed didn’t. The reasoning was that when you died they carried you out feet towards the door. So to sleep with your feet towards the door was dicing with death. She slept soundly on one side of the bed at the beginning of the week then swapped to the other side at the end of the week. This was considered quite sensible because it wore the sheets evenly.
Granny sang to me the first song I ever heard. At the time I hadn’t a clue what the song was about. It went like this:

Who’s this coming down the street?
Mrs Simpson sweaty feet.
She’s been married many times before.
Now she’s knocking on Edwards’s door.

Granny’s first job, she told us, was holding cow’s tails while they were milked. Apparently, you can get a very nasty whiplash on the face from a shitty cows tail. They later invented a wire device that held the cow’s tail, which probably made her job obsolete. Such is progress, now the milker and the milkee’s tail holder is gone. It’s no fun for the cow lashing the milking machine. Granny was what they called a, ‘Charwoman.’ Her patrons preferred to call her a cleaning lady. She cleaned for ladies in the neighbourhood. Not that their houses needed cleaning or they couldn’t do it themselves, it was a status thing. They would actually spend hours cleaning their houses and then have a cleaning lady come in. It wasn’t any use having a cleaning lady if no one knew it. So they would slip it into conversations. Such as,
‘What a lovely hat you’re wearing today Mrs Broadbent”.
“Oh! do you think so. I’m not so sure of the colour; African violet does seem to clash with my peccary handbag. I’m just wearing it to the hairdressers. Then when I get back home I’m giving it to my cleaning lady.”
Fashion, status and philanthropy all in one go.
Most women’s hats were peculiar, more symbolic than practical, they were very small. It was as if they’d taken the crown of one hat and divided it up. Each bit was shaped like the left over peel of sliced orange. That way, because of the shortages, instead of no hat at all each woman got a part of a hat. So women walked out with what looked like a cloth croissant with a bit of net to keep the flies off. A nice hat was much prized.
“That’s very good of you Mrs Broadbent, is it your cleaning lady’s birthday?”
“Oh no, we got her a new bucket for her birthday”.
They couldn’t be letting the charlady get too uppity.

Gafas Para Los Muertos.
(Spectacles for the dead).

Knowing about Grannie’s pennies I was very much alarmed when on the works trip to Blackpool I banged my eye riding in a dodgem car. I was getting used to the pain when it was suggested to Dad that he put a penny on it. I didn’t realise this was in lieu of a steak. I thought I was on my way out and Granny would be round any minute with another penny for the other eye and her washing bucket.

Her job was to wash the body, even if it wasn’t bath night and redress them in their, ‘Laying out clothes’. These clothes were always kept in the bottom drawer. Kept sweet smelling with a, ‘Perfume brick.’ Women were always ready for the two main stages of life. They had a bottom drawer ready for when they got married and then it was replaced by one for when they died.

Just before we crashed and I got my first blackeye.

A PERFUME BRICK

Even so she couldn’t have been that concerned because I don’t recall her packing a balaclava, although I seem to remember her wearing a pretty white one in her coffin and, when I kissed her, she was like an ice lolly. Men of course went fully clothed. I remember two old chaps outside David’s shop. One said,
“Your suit’s looking a bit tatty Jim.”
“Yes,” Jim replied, “It’ll not see me out, I’ll soon have to go to bed.”
You see Jim knew it wasn’t worth buying another suit because he wouldn’t get the wear out of it before he died. He probably ended up buried in a fake suit. Fake suits are the ones that are just a front and tie up the back, like the gowns in hospital.
This was the basis of the first play I wrote, ‘Benny Rolly’. The plot had absolutely nothing to do with the real Benny Rolly. He was an older lad who lived on the road. I just thought it was a great name.
I saw a girl on television the other day she said,
“My sister’s very clever she’s even read, Rogers Theory.” (Roget’s Thesaurus).
Granny made the same kind of mistakes, mishearing what was said. I once heard her bragging to a neighbour about my abilities. I think she must have thought I was reading about competitive bakery.
She said, “Yes he’s reading a book. It’s called, The Currant Teacake Exhibition.” That puzzled me for a while till I picked up the book I was reading, ‘The Kontiki Expedition.’
She even got my Dad’s name wrong in her will. She called him Rueben Bertie Lunn. Dad got us a small weird dog, fully grown; it looked like a fat Alsatian puppy. When a neighbour asked what kind of dog it was she said it was a, “House Agent.”

When we got the dog we were told it was a bitch. This information seemed to upset Aunty Ethel. She didn’t want to know it was a bitch and she didn’t think anyone else did either. To her, bitch was a thing you did, or a bad woman. Aunt Ethel was married to Uncle Ronnie; they lived in Sowerby Bridge. When I was small Uncle Ronnie used to give me a rolled up newspaper and hold me up high so I could swat the normally unreachable high altitude flies, when in season of course. So I was put to work, quite young, fighting disease.

Auntie Ethel came to our house every Saturday. She was very keen on stopping nail biting and encouraging the exposure of cuticles on our fingernails. She would bribe us to push the skin down on our nails with the towel to make the cuticles show. It was also her mission in life to stop us saying, “Eh?” or ‘What?” We had to say, “Pardon?” Auntie thought this was correct, she was, of course, completely wrong. She would inform me when I was being naughty, but would often not tell me why. I was told not to hum tunes. When I asked why? She’d say, "It’s rude.”
Later I found out it wasn’t the humming that she thought was rude, it was what I was humming. I didn't know the words. Aunt Ethel obviously knew the words. The song was 'Hitler had only got one ball'.
The very first rude song I knew, I learned at the junior school from a lad called Martin Brown. It was sung to the tune of Sousa’s ‘Liberty Bell’ so every time I see ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ I’m reminded of it. I don’t know what it was called but it went like this;

In’t it a pity she only one titty to feed the baby on.
In’t it a bugger it can’t have another
Berrom berrom berrom.

Aunty Ethel’s reaction was the same when I started calling people, “Twats.” She wouldn’t tell me what it meant; it just had not to be said. I remember her trying to tell me not to say the word, without saying the word herself. She would wince when I said it and look round hoping no one was in earshot.
‘You mustn’t say that word again.” ‘What word?” I’d ask. “You know, that word.” Innocently I look up at her and say, “Twat?”
She’d whisper, “Yes, stop it.”
As if talking about the word without saying it was just as bad and by whispering God might not hear. She asked where I’d heard it. I said a teacher had called me it. That threw her. She said,” Well you could knock me down with a feather.” This threw me, I thought you could only knock someone down with a feather if it was still attached to the chicken.
I don’t think Auntie Ethel believed a teacher had called me a twat. Thinking back he probably called me a twit. I’m still not sure what either word means. It was rather like the girl who asked what, “Confidential,” meant. She was told it was something we didn’t talk about. So she assumed it was something rude and never mentioned it again. I was not like that girl.
I took every opportunity to tell anyone, whether they wanted to know or not, particularly adults.

Some words are meaningless but sound rude. While I was working on 'Jig saw' I was involved in a scene in which the word, “Wazak” was used. The BBC. sent me a letter from a woman complaining. The gist of which was, that she didn’t spend lots of money sending her daughter to school for her to come home and hear the word ‘Wazak’ on the television.
In future she would make sure that her daughter never watched the BBC. ever again. A covering letter asked me what the word meant. I contacted Clive Doig the producer and pointed out that I hadn’t a clue what the word meant but I was fairly certain that it wasn’t rude. I then asked why the letter had been sent to me, since I hadn’t said the word. I ‘d actual been called, “A wasak,” by the puppet Hector the hedgehog. I must admit at the time I thought it sounded a bit off. I think the assumption was that any strange, rude, dialect sounding words must have come from me.

You don’t have to use rude words for effect; said the right way, “Pillow case”, can sound very offensive.
Knowing Timmy our dog was a bitch. We took every opportunity to now use legitimately what we knew was a rude word. People would stop and would say to us,
“Oh what a lovely puppy. Is it an Alsatian?”
“No”, I’d say. “It’s a bitch”.

Two friends, John and Doreen Norris came round one day and said they’d told their mother our dog was a bitch.

“A bitch is it”, she said, “And I bet it’s a bugger?”
We kids thought, great, this must be one heck of a bad dog. Mrs Norris was right the little sod was a bugger; it would come home with hens bigger than it was. I don’t think she liked what we were feeding her. She didn’t of course have a ration book. The dog had to stretch her head really high to drag the hens’ home; even then she kept tripping over them. Why she brought them home I don’t know. Perhaps she’d seen Dad plucking a hen and thought that maybe he’d do one for her. We were stuck with stolen dead hens. Eating them would have made us a party to the crime. Granny said, I think jokingly,
“Why don’t we use it to clean the chimley?”
‘The chimley’, was I later found out correctly pronounced, “Chimney”.

Granny told us they used to clean their chimneys by tying a shelter brick to a bush and dropping it down the chimney. We always called bricks, shelter bricks, because all the houses were stone, only the air raid shelters were brick, so all bricks were called shelter bricks. For a really clean chimney instead of a bush, a chicken was used, preferably a live one. The brick was dropped down with the rope and the chicken pulled through. The mad fluttering cleaned the chimney, partially plucked the chicken and if the chimney was hot, part cooked it. The terror caused adrenaline in the chicken and made it nicer to eat.
This was because fear improves the flavour.

Don’t they all say food tasted better then? It had been common knowledge since the time of bull baiting. Everyone knew in the past, a baited bull was more palatable. Cannibals understood this pre-cooking terror tip. Baiting and cannibalism are frowned on, but there was a scary war on then. Scared food is tastier food. Now we’re informed even plants have feelings. So I suppose, a scared carrot is a tastier carrot. So don’t talk to your plants like Prince Charles ... threaten them!
I never knew what happened to the dog’s stolen hens. Dad never told me. I think he thought I might crack under interrogation. The hen’s bodies just disappeared and so did the dog.

When I was a student I got the worse for drink and returned home with five paraffin road lamps, which I left, still lit, on the kitchen table. When I came down in the morning the smell of paraffin smoke reminded me of my souvenirs. They were nowhere to be seen. Dad had hidden the evidence of my crime. He’d gone out and found the nearest hole in the road and put the lamps round it. It was not the hole I’d got them from. The workmen I think were used to lamps going missing but not increasing. Dad was very clever hiding the lamps where you would naturally expect them to be. But where would you put dead chickens that appeared normal? I concluded he must have put them on a Zebra crossing so it appeared they ‘d been caught unawares on a 'Chicken's Day Out'.

I’m reminded of a woman that I met in a shoe shop. She said she had to buy lots of shoes because her feet swelled up.
“I’m working in temperatures of ninety degrees,” she said.
Amazed, I inquired where was she working? “Elland brickworks,” I suggested.
“No”, she said, “The old folks home, it’s so hot the inmates are par-boiled”.
“I suppose it makes them easier to cook, sorry, cremate.” I remarked.
I was of course thinking of, ‘Potted Nanny and the chimney chickens.’

Elland brickworks brings to mind Anton, a blind guy, who told me he’d been to Australia. I tried to persuade him he’d been conned. What was the point of sending a blind person on a scenic holiday? They could have saved money by sending him on a 'virtual reality holiday' to Elland brickworks, where they have the heat and the dust. How would he know he wasn’t in Australia? They could put his hands on a brick kiln and tell him it was Ayrs Rock. They could give him senna pod wine and tell him he was in Egypt. He’d have the heat the dust and the shits as well. How would he know the difference?

I couldn’t convince him, he was no fool. Hadn’t he planned the great escape from Tapton Mount school for the blind? The escape party consisted of Anton, Colin, Andrew, Kevin and Brian they all planned to boldly walk out of the school. Not so simple when you’re blind. So they wouldn’t be recognised, they made masks out of Braille paper. The stroke of genius was that they’d cut eyeholes in them. Any teacher from the school might wonder, “Who are those mysterious masked boys?” Then they’d note the eyeholes and realise they were not from Tapton school because they could see. As the escape approached, their morale was getting lower so Anton decided to take his mandolin to keep their spirits up.