Mystery and mischief at Granny's

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Nov 10, 2006 

The bungalow my granny lived in when I was six was called Saigon. She named it herself. She'd heard the word on the television news and thought it sounded exotic. Granny liked giving things exotic names. Her dogs were called Sabre and Gretchen. Gretchen seemed a slightly funny name for an elderly dachshund whose nipples almost touched the floor. But Sabre?

"It's a weapon, " our father said, as if that explained it.

Granny always moved house when we moved, and since we moved every two or three years, she moved a lot. She followed us all the way round Nottingham just to stay close to our father. She said she got nervous at night if she was more than about a mile away from him.

The bungalow she lived in when I was seven was in a brand new cul-de-sac. As she was the very first person to buy a property there, they asked if she'd like to name the whole cul-de-sac. Granny thought about it for ages and came up with The Point. So that was her address: 1, The Point.

Of all my Granny's houses, it's the bungalow at The Point that I remember best. Granny liked modern and outlandish things. So you came in the front door and immediately there was the sound of running water, a sound that always made you want to wet your knickers. And there, right in front of you, in the place where most normal people just had a table, a mirror and some keys, Granny had a real fish pond, complete with fountain. Bright orange fish lurked under waterlilies. The fish were real but the lilies were plastic (I wondered if that confused the fish). And the entire wall was paved with fake crazy paving that made your eyes go funny if you stared at it too long.

A few steps down from the hall in the lounge everything was lilac, purple, mauve: purple carpet, lilac sofa, purple cushions with grey piping, purple glass dishes and an assortment of swirly glass ornaments. There was a pouffe on wheels that we liked to ride on. If Granny was in the room we just wheeled it around sensibly but if she went to get something from the kitchen, we quickly hoisted it up the hall steps and flung ourselves down so it crashed.

On the table in the lounge were some things our grandfather had brought back from his travels before he died: a wooden elephant, a box of cocktail sticks, three carved men's faces on corks that smelled of Dubonnet if you shoved them against your nose, an old creased postcard with the flag of Canada on and, best of all, a white frosted glass ashtray that was actually a lady with no clothes on, sitting, head flung back and bosoms sticking up, ready to have ash tipped in her lap. Although the lady was totally bare, you couldn't see too much lower body detail because at that point her body just dissolved into the glass. We giggled at it until Granny put it away in the sideboard.

Granny's dining room was pretty normal - just a long dark table with a bowl of spotty fruit on it. But if you went through to her kitchen, you gasped because the walls were covered entirely in gold blistery paper. If it was sunny the glare almost blinded you. We liked to shut our eyes and run our fingers over it and imagine a million shiny scabs.

In Granny's kitchen there were biscuits wrapped in foil. Every time you took a bite, bits of chocolate fell off and Gretchen rushed to eat them up. In a kitchen drawer were golf balls that had been punctured in many places by her teeth. We were allowed to take these chewed up golf balls and play with them outside but Granny told us not to lick them because dog spit was dirty.

Granny's bathroom was pale yellow and cold and on the wall were three brown china geese flying towards the toilet. The bath had a soap on a rope and a special lacy waterproof pillow for Granny to put her head on.

But it was the soap for washing your hands with that fascinated me. This was called a "guest soap " and it had a picture of a lilac rose on it. I was fascinated by how the picture managed to stay on even when you washed your hands and wondered how much washing it would take for it to come off.

One day I could bear it no longer and started picking at the rose with my fingernails. Once I'd started I couldn't stop and soon it came off - in bits. Quickly, I tried to stick the bits back on but they wouldn't stay. In the end I left the mess on the side of the basin and went to play.

Later, Granny came into the room with cold angry eyes. "Who vandalised my guest soap? "

No one said a word.

"Julie? "

I shook my head and blushed horribly.

Granny walked away. She said nothing. The guest soap just disappeared and in its place next time there was a yellow one that looked like a lemon.

For years after that, soaps with transfers gave me a bad feeling, reminded me of being a vandal and a liar. I used to prefer not to wash my hands at all, rather than risk touching one.