The Farmer & His Wife
Don’t try to teach your granny to boil eggs, John Taylor says!
IHAVE just left the kitchen in a hurry. I had to. After all, you can’t afford to shatter the innocence of a ten-yearold, can you?
It happened so simply. Our only granddaughter, Jane, was staying with Granny.
I was there also, but quite rightly it is always “Granny’s House”.
They had been down the field to the quarry and the hens.
It was a great treat – Jane had gathered the eggs.
Granny asked what she would like for tea.
“An egg, Granny.”
“It it isn’t your birthday, dear.”
Jane looked in bewilderment at Anne.
Granny explained to her that when she was a little girl, she got an egg for tea on her birthday and all the others looked on in envy.
But, as she didn’t come often, Jane could have two brown ones for her tea.
As Granny popped them into the pan, a very serious ten-year-old said, “Granny, if you want them to boil right, I think I should tell you that you will have to time them for three minutes.
“I learned that at school the other day.”
It was at that point that I left the kitchen in a hurry!
It was too much for me to hear a child give her granny a lesson, be it in all innocence, on how to boil an egg!
We had a good laugh about it when she had gone to bed.
It somehow did not dawn on Jane that Granny had been dealing with eggs in every conceiveable way for over fifty years.
I said that I would put an egg-timer in her stocking next Christmas, but I was instructed to do no such thing.
We got to chatting about eggs that night.
Anne’s dad used to bring home plovers’ eggs, which, Anne said, were very rich.
You weren’t breaking the law back then, but I still think it was a very cruel thing to do.
Anne’s family, I’m sure, thought nothing about it.
They were fruits of the earth, like mushrooms, rabbits and anything else that ran, flew or grew on their farm. ■