Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I w m o se
Nan’s one of those. Cheerful. She says hello to the driver, to those sat at the front, in the middle, at the back. Morning, morning, morning! I ask Nan if she can remember where she went for her first holiday.
“It was Somerset,” she says. “I was three-and-a-half. I went there as an evacuee because our house got bombed. We went up the shops and when we got back our house wasn’t there any more. My sister started crying but apparently I thought it was funny.”
After each stop at a service station, Nan returns to the coach with new gossip. She seems a very effective gatherer of the stuff. So-and-so has 20 grandchildren. So-and-so will only drink loose leaf tea because she reckons she can taste the bag. So-and-so has the same Kindle as me but doesn’t appear to know how to operate it.
On each occasion – at each services – she is only out of my sight a couple of minutes, and according to her only spending a penny, and yet her gossip haul is reliably large.
At Corley services on the M6, two familiar faces join us. It’s Dennis and Clem, who I met in Scarborough. I give it 10 minutes then go and say hello.
“Clem thought it was you,” says Dennis. “Didn’t you, love? You thought it was Ben. I said don’t be daft, he wouldn’t do it twice. Who’s that with you?” “That’s my girlfriend.”
“Well you’re punching above your weight, let me tell you.” “It’s my nan.”
“Is that right? You know, the only other person we’ve seen twice on a Shearings is Mrs Greggs.
“To be fair, you couldn’t miss her. We called her Mrs Greggs because the coach hadn’t finished parking before she was in Greggs buying a couple of pies and a Chelsea bun. Anyway, you’d better sit down before your nan thinks you’re organising a foursome.”
As we approach Llandudno, people start to shuffle happily at the prospect of arrival, dinner and maybe a glass of wine.
Our driver Tim says it should be borne in mind free bus travel doesn’t apply in Wales.
This announcement is met with boos and tuts, and the odd fourletter word. Had Tim announced that all grandchildren were to be sacrificed by Welsh druids, it’s hard to imagine this lot being any more distraught.
The County Hotel is on the seafront. When we pull up, a hotel employee called Eva gets on. She sounds at once Polish and Scouse. She promises to keep it short and sweet and then goes on at some length about what’s for dinner (laverbread and cockles), what’s planned for this evening (bingo and singing), and what time our medication will be administered. I find this last joke offensive but nobody else seems to – it goes down very well in fact.
Nan’s in 318 and I’m in 317. The lift takes two at a time.
It’s explained that the two-person limit was introduced last summer, after a gentleman in a mobility scooter inexplicably attempted to drive into the lift when several people were already in it.
Later, the waitress explains that as we booked late our table’s a bit out of the way. I don’t mind, nor does Nan. She can see more from here, and if she cranks her hearing aids up she can still deduce the thrust of just about every conversation in the room. And the dining room is packed – there are three coach loads in this week.
We’ve got a table for four to ourselves, so we sit next to each other rather than opposite, so we can see the same thing.
I ask what food Nan remembers from the 40s and 50s. She says there was lots of stew, and lots of soup, and bread and dripping, and... “Bread and dripping?” “Yeah.” ‘Is that a pudding? Like bread and butter pudding?’
“No, darling, it’s not a pudding. It’s the soft fat that forms when the juices from meat have cooled and solidified.” “Then what do you with that?”
“Eat it. I wish I could take you to the 1940s, you’d learn a thing or two.”
Downstairs is a ‘ballroom’. We’re just in time for the bingo, which will be called by the resident entertainer, Jim, who doesn’t waste much time before sharing his life story. To be fair, his CV is rather succinct: I used to be a Marine, now I call bingo. Not long into the first game, I realise that whenever I get a number Nan doesn’t, and vice versa. I think that’s how they print the tickets.
It’s a shame as it means we can never both be happy. Or maybe that’s not right because Nan seems pretty pleased no matter what number comes up. She gets visibly excited when I go on a roll, even though this means she’s doing rubbish. I know that Nan would rather I won the bingo than her.
The next morning, religion is the topic of conversation. It started when I asked Nan if she believed in God. She asked why I was asking and I said I’d seen a man cross himself before starting on his