the good and the not so good.

Ha! It's this one! You can get it in Lidl!

Tonight I visit my granny. She's 92 and 3/4  but she can still be good company. Repetitive sometimes. Set in her ways. But also pragmatic, humorous, cynical, philosophical.

She wants a special drink, a rare social indulgence, and I find cherry liquer  in her drinks cabinet; bought decades ago in Duty Free, one bottle of something special per holiday. It's red and sweetly warm and tastes of real cherry juice from cherries grown so long ago it's hard to fathom*. In the cupboard are two tiny teeny glasses, the shape of flowers, with belled ends that flared out at the top, not much bigger than your little finger.

We discuss Marks and Spencers, as always, she likes their trouser length options. She looks at the trousers she's wearing and says she remembered the other day that she'd bought them in Belfast - and after a well timed pause, reveals that she hasn't been to Belfast since 1939. She got them in some latter day Penny's, and they didn't cost more than 15 shillings. She doesn't like to think how many times she's washed them. I'd say she got good value out of that purchase :)

Not so fun is the mother-in-law conversations we have about my parents' marriage... she can hear no wrong of my father, given his brutal upbringing... she can't hear that my mother was devoted to him, remained in love with him throughout all the shit. But he never spoke a bad word about her. Not to her. Maybe he did to us.

Maybe not... we just got to observe the horrible way he treated her.

She lowers her voice... well, your mother wasn't the best housekeeper. I do think that bothered him. Though he didn't say it. He was loyal to her that way.

Sigh.

*ok maybe not, googleimages suggests I can get it in Lidl, lol.