Gloriously grumpy granny!

Bossy nurses. Woeful workmen. The ungrateful young. VIRGINIA IRONSIDE’S fed up of ’em all and is proud to be Britain’s most...

SHE’S been The Oldie magazine’s resident grumpy old woman for ten years, taking on dictatorial nurses, irritating tour guides — and, of course, those fools who suggest pensioners have it easy. Now, to mark her decade as Britain’s grouchiest granny, here’s VIRGINIA

IRONSIDE’S best moans and musings on life and ageing...

WAR WITH THE BOSSY NURSES

I WAS in hospital recently having an operation on my shoulder. What I hate about hospitals is how they make me feel (to use the current jargon) disempowered.

‘Do not have anything to eat or drink after 7.30am,’ ordered the booklet called Admission To The hospital. I found myself eating and drinking up to eight o’clock, cackling all the while. And before I left home at 10am, I couldn’t resist a tiny sip of water, just to spite them.

I had smuggled in painkillers and sleeping pills just in case they weren’t forthcoming and filled the bottles with cotton wool to stop them rattling and being discovered by the Nurse Nazis.

however, when I tried to refuse the anti-DVT stockings, my nurse was stronger than most. She declared they wouldn’t carry out the operation without them. I declared it would be impossible for me to sleep with my legs bound. She said we would see about that later. Round one to her.

But when she insisted I had to sleep in the hospital garment that poses as a nightdress, which ties up at the back, I drew the line. Eventually she allowed me my own nightdress. Round two to me.

The moment she left the room, I lowered my legs from the bed and proceeded with great difficulty, using one arm, to extricate myself from the tortuous stockings.

And, despite the fact I’d already received a sleeping pill, I couldn’t resist adding a Solpadeine of my own. Just to show them.

I am 72 years old. I am ridiculous. And yet these small victories meant so much as I lay there in the darkness. To them, I might simply be the old arthritic female patient in Room 146. But really I am, I thought, not just a human being but a seditionist, a traitor and, dammit, something of a revolutionary.

TOUR-TORTURE

AS a single woman it’s very tempting to take a package holiday. however, faced with going off by myself to see the Acropolis or the Taj Mahal, I often find myself seduced by the free guided tour provided by the organisers.

But, oh, I shouldn’t listen to that seductive will-o’-the-wisp! From the moment I find all the window seats have been taken because I’ve let a 100year-old with a walking frame get on in front of me, to the visit to the guide’s cousin’s carpet shop, I usually regret every minute.

Last time, our guide (who always takes the best front seat) was a joker. Or, as she put it in her heavy accent, ‘choker’. ‘I expect you know the ABC of tourism?’ she said, before she hauled us to the third largest cathedral in northern Bulgaria.

‘It stand for Another Bloody Church! And now I am taking you to another bloody church! My little choke! This cathedral was built in the Middle Ages by Sergei the Seventh, and what is most interesting is that the stones consist of igneous rock, first construct in 5,000 BC. It is also 200 kilometres above sea level.’

She told us, between stops at ABCs, that the cheese they make was ‘like feta, but better!’ (‘You see, we have better feta — my little choke!’)

Guides don’t have to be intelligent or amusing because they have a captive audience. If I ever find myself on a tour bus again I’m going to start up a slow hand-clap, while shouting ‘Boring! Boring!’ and ‘Off! Off! Off!’

Not really. Chust my little choke.

A BLIGHT ON THOSE BUILDERS

WHEN the wall in my garden fell down, a friend told me he’d got the most amazing builders who would come at the drop of a hat. The moment Mike and Sean shambled into my kitchen with their glazed eyes and unfriendly mumbles of ‘heo mum’ (one appeared to have no teeth) I should have heard warning bells.

They gave me an estimate, asked for a lot of cash up-front and disappeared. A week later they returned. Sean had had a bad leg, they explained. But now ‘You don’t have to worry about a thing, Valerie. We’ll have it done in no time!’ Virginia, I said. half an hour later they disappeared again. A week later they were back. The van had broken down. But now they’d crack on. ‘You’ll see, Victoria.’

‘You won’t pull up my plants or destroy my lawn, will you?’ I asked, as I made tea and provided huge slices of cake to bribe them to stay a bit longer. ‘By the way, it’s Virginia.’

‘To be sure,’ said Sean. ‘We know how precious plants can be. We’ll have to cut a bit back, but everything will be right as rain...why, talk of the Devil! That was a spot, wasn’t it, Mike? We can’t work in this weather. See you tomorrow, Vanessa! My, that cake was good!’

Eventually, after a great deal of money had exchanged hands (twice the original estimate), the wall was put up. But the garden was left like a World War I battlefield. The laburnum, the ceanothus — everything had been hacked back. A pile of rubble — bricks, old moroff tar, broken fencing — lay on top of the hydrangeas. I swear that no birds sang.

‘Goodbye, Veronica!’ said Sean on the last day. ‘Love that cake!’ Toothless Mike just mumbled.

If it hadn’t already clearly been done by the people he’d been working for before, I would cheerfully have kicked his teeth in.

THE JOY OF BUTTER

WE decided — or rather decided — to make butter with my grandson, aged seven. I had a vague memory of my grandmother putting some milk into a jar, screwing the lid on and leaving me to shake it like Mick Jagger working his maracas, until finally a tiny pat of butter appeared.

But because I doubted that today’s super-skimmed muck would have I enough cream in it to make butter for a goblin’s breakfast toast, I bought some cream and my grandson got shaking.

he’d been going for half an hour with no results. Then I noticed on the cream carton that while the words ‘Double’ and ‘Cream’ were written big, between them lay, in tiny letters, the ominous phrase ‘alternative to’.

‘It’s not real cream!’ I cried, and hauled him round to the shop. Despite the fact it was clear my grandson now had no interest whatever in making butter, I was driven by a crazy grandmotherly imperative to Make Butter Come What May.

We returned with proper cream and, plastering a smile on my face, I said :‘ At last! We can finally get cracking!’

his face grey with boredom, my grandson shook his head desultorily.

‘Come on, we can’t give up now,’ I said, gamely. ‘Never say die!’

‘I’m bored with making butter,’ he said doggedly. ‘It’s not going to work.’

‘Let’s watch it on YouTube!’ I suggested. ‘There must be films of people making butter.’

The word ‘computer’ seemed to perk him up, so after watching several videos of butter being made effortlessly using exactly the same technique as ours, I insisted we try again. ‘Do we have to?’ he said, yawning. ‘Just five minutes,’ I said. ‘If it doesn’t work after five minutes, we’ll stop.’ Five minutes later, I said: ‘OK. I give in.’ I put the jar down feeling terribly despondent.

he looked at me. he obviously wanted to do something else but didn’t want to let the side down. Suddenly, a cheeky grin crossed his face. ‘Come on, Granny!’ he said. ‘Never say die!’

And after about ten seconds a thumping sound came from inside the jar. My grandson stopped shaking and astonished, looked inside.

‘BUTTER!’ he shouted. ‘GRANNY! GRANNY! BUTTER! IT’S BUTTER! I’VE DONE IT!’

I felt like crying with joy. The rest of the day went with a swing, punctuated every half hour or so by my grandson saying to me, smugly: ‘I made it, didn’t I, Granny? You were going to give up, but I said “Never say die!”’ What could I say? ‘You did indeed!’ I agreed. And of course although it only buttered two small crumbs of toast, it turned out to be the most delicious butter we had ever tasted in our lives.

THE AGE GAP

I WAS recently asked on to a television news programme to discuss a survey that showed, apparently, while under-30s are lonely, riddled with anxiety, beset with money troubles and generally cutting down on drink and drugs because they can’t afford it, over-60s are having the time of their lives — sky-diving, white-water rafting, partying till dawn and travelling the world.

This was regarded as very unfair. Indeed, the interviewer even asked me: ‘Do you feel like you should give up some of the pensioner perks to make amends with the young?’ (sic — and I have to add that because the grammar — well, my dear!) Amends? My eyes bulged. Amends are what burglars make to old ladies they’ve robbed of all their savings.

Why on earth, I wondered, should I make amends?

And as I was pondering this, I thought: who thinks being young in my day was fun?

What about earning £10 a week as a temporary secretary (in my case having to wear gloves, on some occasions, because the office was so cold)?

The young today don’t find their hair smells because they can’t afford to wash it because six inches of hot bathwater from an uncertain geyser is all you’re allowed once a week.

If they run out of bread and eggs on

Sunday, they can go to the corner shop, not wait, eggless and breadless, till Monday. And the wine. Anyone remember those cheap bottles? Makes my eyes water just to think of them. And the food! The fish was frequently off. The butcher’s slabs covered with flies.

Television, refrigerators, even cars — those were only for the well-off.

OK, it was easier to buy a flat. And jobs were easier to get — for the few who were well enough educated.

And yes, we did get university grants. But apart from that, life was the very pits. I spent most of my youth crying and trying to find out from the library (no internet then) ways I could kill myself successfully.

Amends? We oldies deserve every tiny little perk we can get.