Mum and Dad have gone off to the pictures to see that Krappy King Arthur movie. I was going to tag along and go to see ‘13 Going On 30’ but the timings were all skew wiff so I stayed at home to scan old photos.

Anyone who grew up with two Grandmothers will know that one Gran is always a bit more special than the other. My Nana Bella was the special one. She was my Mums Mum. She was married to Granddad Mick (real name James but everyone called him Mick, and no one knows why) who was a weekend alcoholic and manic smoker/gardener. They hated each other, slept in separate rooms all their married life and barely spoke. She cooked, he ate it. She brought the papers home after her early morning cleaning job, he read them in silence all day. I spent a lot of time at their house while I was growing up and despite themselves they made the house a warm and fun place to visit.
Nana Bella was a cleaner all her life. She cleaned Pat Telfords (the towns swishest hairdresser) for the last twenty years of her life. They closed the hairdressers for a whole day the day we buried Nana Bella. Summer holidays always involved Nana Bella and me in the back seat of the car sharing boiled sweets and reading old Womans Weekly magazines that she’d taken from the hairdressers. We shared bunk beds in the caravan and every morning she would wake us all up getting dressed at 6am because she found it impossible to have a lie-in, even on holiday. She’d leave the caravan and walk to the nearest town and return with newspapers, fresh milk, bread and bacon.
Nana Bella was coming home from work one day when she noticed that the curtains of the house opposite were on fire. She called to Granddad Mick in the garden and he came running out. He dashed into their bathroom, wet a towel and wrapped it over his head and kicked down the door of the burning house. He crawled into the house and several minutes later pulled out the blackened body of the old dear that lived there (Nanas bingo buddy). As he pulled her across the lawn her head came away from the body. A terrible thing for anyone to see but they got over it. No counselling, no mention of stress trauma, just lots of cups of hot sweet tea. Nana Bella was also ‘flashed at’ by a man in the alley near our house and I remember her being more upset by that than the headless bingo buddy.
Nana Bella died of lung cancer. She never smoked a cigarette in her life but lived with my Granddads forty-a-day habit for fifty years. She died while we were all at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle watching Jesus Christ Superstar. The hospital couldn’t reach us. When they rang early on Sunday morning and broke the news to my Mum she howled like a banshee which woke me up. She sent my Dad up to my bedroom to tell me but I knew what had happened after hearing that howl. He walked into my room, looked at me, burst into tears and walked out. That was a grim day. Granddad Mick was brought to our house (they had no telephone) and allowed to get drunk. He withered and died six months later. Couldn’t, and didn’t want to, live without Nana Bella.

Nana Bella, Me and my Mum under a tree in Scotland. I loved that cardigan.

Mum, Me and Nana Bella outside our chalet somewhere in Norfolk. I wasn't so keen on that cardigan.

Me, Mum and Nana Bella somewhere in Cornwall. Just look at that trouser and cardigan ensemble! And those shoes! Proto-Camper!!!

Nana Bella (looking tres cool in her Ray-Bans) and me on the beach in Scotland.

We loved a wee boat trip. Me and Nana Bella setting sail for a jaunt round Scarborough Bay.