Sally- Part 21. COOEE! DID I SHOW YOU THIS PICTURE?

" Now let me think, which tooth was it?" Shirley's look says it all ! Only five minutes after casting off !

My children looked forward to Grandma Sylvia's visits which, though meant to last three or four days, generally went on for a month, because she never carried less than thirty bars of chocolate, mostly old and well sucked but nevertheless torn straight out of her bag without so much as a "Hello Grandma".

Meeting her at Newcastle train station was an experience which needs no exaggeration. Whilst Shirley stayed at home crying and gibbering and staring into space not daring to think of what she would have to listen to again, for there was no tale from the past that Sally wouldn't repeat, even if you told her that you had already heard it several times, I would stand on the bridge connecting the platforms watching her train arrive.

There was no need to hunt up and down the carriages looking for her, I only needed to keep my eyes on the one where the doors burst open before the train had stopped and about a hundred people jumped out and started running for their lives with a look of the last moments of madness in their eyes and jaws dropped in an ugly mute silence!

Looking through the window I would see my mother with a fixed smile on her face, which she always reserved for the lower classes, gathering up a mountain of sepia photographs and shovelling them into one of three handbags and calling to the backs of the departing masses, "Cooee! Darling! Now did I show you this one of my Great Aunt Rachel who died in 1896 from pernicious anaemia?"

I once met her at Norwich coach station to take her to join the family on a holiday on the Norfolk Broads, where we rented a house and motor boat.

A similar scene awaited though obviously, being smaller, the coach had less people jumping out of it. This time as she stepped down with that same smile, she saw me over the heads of the scattering throng and called out,"Cooee! David! I've got a lovely gentleman here dying to meet you!"

Disappearing around a corner staring back with the look of an escaping prisoner of war, was an elderly man talking rapidly to himself.

I heard "Never! Never again! Never!

Poor devil!

He stopped fleetingly and with a wild look in his eyes he caught a glimpse of his tormenter and cried out, " All the way from London! All the bleedin way!"

Mum, oblivious as ever, called out to me, "Quick, see if he wants a lift!" and when I said it was too late, she said, genuinely disappointed, "Oh bother! I was just about to tell him the story about the day that Uncle Reggie broke a tooth in his comb!"

I couldn't bear to think of the state of Shirley's mind by the end of the coming week!

Look at the photo and pity my wife!

About one minute after taking it  I turned and shouted, " Mum for goodness sake shut up!" ( but a lot ruder! ) and she turned to Shirley and said conspiratorially, "He's only jealous darling! Ignore him! Now where was I? Ah! Yes, Ernie was also a hairdresser, well barber really who had trouble with the teeth in his combs.........blah blah blah bloody blah dee blah dee dribble !!!!!!!"

I rest my case.