Listening to my grandparents’ adventures in lockdown
I miss my family. My sister and parents are shielding together. A concentrated powerhouse of Joneses helping my mum through chemotherapy. I’m in my own cocoon with my boyfriend, just ten miles away but the distance has never felt more pronounced.
My grandparents, who are both in their mid-eighties, live a six-hour drive from London. It’s a route they’ve travelled thousands of times. They’ve been present for every important moment and milestone. My grandad read my A-level philosophy books to help me revise in secondary school. My grandma was there when we chose my wedding dress, three generations of misty eyes in the shop mirror.
Adventures (wedding included) are on hold right now so I’ve been recording some of my grandparents’ wildest times. It’s an ongoing project involving occasional close-ups of my grandad’s hearing aid as he struggles to hear me. We’re all getting used to video calls.
My grandma once didn’t sleep out of concern my friends, all huge fans of her cooking, might not like her quiche. It’s difficult to marry this ultra-caring and cautious woman with the fact she once hitchhiked from South Shields to France on the back of lorries.
When she was 17, my grandma worked at the wool and socks counter of Allen’s, a drapery shop. She’d work five and a half days a week for one pound. One day, ‘just like that’, her and three colleagues decided their next trip would be to France.
They sat in the open back of a lorry driven by a man who was fortuitously also on the way to Dover. It took two days to get to Calais, and no one in the group spoke a word of French. My grandma says their charm got them there.
The group ended up in a hostel in the red light district before heading to the countryside, eating cheese and baguettes and none of the tins my tiny grandma was carting around in her huge rucksack. She sent her mum a postcard every day and celebrated Bastille Day. I asked my grandma if she thought it was brave, travelling the way she did. ‘I didn’t think I was but I must have been.’
I’ve asked my grandma to send photos of her wearing jeans, carefree in the French sunshine. It’s amazing to consider her as intrepid teenage Evelyn, not just my special, ever-present and ever-caring grandma.
My grandad has always been irreverent. He once convinced me he’d put his arm inside a crocodile and turned it inside out. He recently said the secret to his sixty-plus year marriage was ‘mutual deafness’. Drafted into national service, he was a reluctant soldier and found it ‘as senseless and pointless as expected’.
In the 50s, the army was huge. My grandad was one of 30,000 in the Royal Engineers in Farnborough, looking for a way out of deployment. He’d heard horror stories about radiation on Christmas Island. At 21, he was due to get married the next year, and intent on making that happen.
He was amazed to find his regiment was keen on boxing. Sportsmen not only got extra food, but a full weekend’s leave, regardless of the result. My grandad’s lack of experience didn’t worry him. He volunteered to join as a light heavyweight, wearing all his gear to make the required pounds, and made the cut.
He became incredibly popular because the cook sergeant would cook his meals during the season, which ran from September to December: lovely big steaks, chips, proper bacon and eggs. Grandad was known to share some of these treats around.
As part of the HQ squadron, my grandad’s exceedingly long arms served him well. He’d bat away the competition, minimising potential facial bruises that my grandma didn’t like - and he didn’t particularly enjoy receiving.
The last match my grandad competed in was a regiment-wide competition in Aldershot. He was up against a man who had boxed for Wales. He feared his luck was about to run out - a long reach could only take him so far.
Fortunately, my grandad was also training for cross country. And accidentally fell on the morning of their semi-final. Doctor’s orders were he couldn’t compete with his swollen knee. The Welsh man had a walk over, and to quote my grandad, ‘my honour and good looks were saved.’
It’s exciting, collecting these stories, seeing the faces of the people who’ve lived the tales. They feel incredibly far away. In time, in the history they’re steeped in, in the distance that threatens to stretch out until a vaccine is developed.
My grandparents keep asking if I’m missing holidays and trips. It’s a running joke that I’m always away, doing something, seeing something new.
There’s a video my aunt filmed at mile 12 of the Great North Run a few years ago. I spotted my grandad, sprinted over (the only time my legs moved fast the whole race) and flung my arms around him. Nothing compares to embracing someone you love.
I miss that more than anything.