Memory Bank

Granny’s House

My granny and grandad’s house smells of old fags.

It doesn’t these days, of course. My granny gave up smoking not long after my grandfather passed away, and hasn’t so much as sniffed a cigarette since. But in my childhood my grandparents were both avid smokers, who consumed nicotine the same way fish gulp water. As a result of their constant, habitual puffing, every inch of their house had the same damp-yet-stale fumigated odor from the smoke leeching into their clothes and hair, carpets and wallpaper. Underneath that sometimes was the smell of chip oil, which meant that dinner was imminent, but nicotine still reigned supreme in the scent wars.

My parents didn’t smoke. Nobody’s parents smoked in front of me. Smoking seemed to be loaded with immorality and weakness of character when I was growing up; practiced only be the elderly and the stubbornly self-harming. As a result of this lated smokerphobic environment, I have never found cigarettes to be thrilling or sexy. Cigrattes were for wizened old people, in my mind, and whenever I saw someone I fancied smoking, it always put me off them automatically.

Aside from its olfactory dimension, my Granny Norma and Grandpa Duncan’s home was utterly pristine. My granny kept it more neat and orderly than Holyrood Palace, as if the Queen and Prince Philip were expected to drop in for tea and biscuits at any moment. Granny hoovered the whole house once a day, polished the windows and swept the paving and wiped the worktops with impressive and frightening rigour. No mote of dust or speck of dirt escaped her notice, and no microbe escaped her daily purges.

As a result of my granny’s scrupulous hygiene (and my grandad’s gift for staying out of her path and remaining neat and tidy) when I went to visit their house it was a somewhat unsettling experience because there was never much accommodation for messy, dribbly, scruffy things like babies or very small boys. Unlike my house, where my kiddie clutter extended everywhere in a comfortable sprawl that made it mine, Granny’s house was a very definitely adult environment that I was intruding into. I was permitted there, of course, because my grandparents loved liked having me, and I was always welcomed when I was dropped off at theirs for the weekend. But I had to adapt to it. It did not adapt to me. Any toys left out would be put back in their place. And the garden was so mowed and clipped that I was only allowed out if it was to perch on the back step or push my wee car around. Playtime took a little bit more effort and imagination than at home.

Granny and Grandad’s house is an ex-council building. Two bedrooms, front and back garden. The exterior is boxy, grey-brown, and pebbledash; so that touching the hard, sharp, spiky surface of the walls can easily draw blood. It’s a post-war building on the edge of Loanhead: a Midlothian miner’s town now devoid of mines and robbed of all purpose. It’s on a very quiet street just across from a park, but I don’t venture much out onto the street. My granny is deathly afraid of me being squashed flat by an oncoming car, even though cars seldom ever go by, and never faster than 12 miles an hour.

The inside of the house is very strange to me because the decorations in my earliest memories are dated. In a year my granny will refurbish the house, but back then the living room is a muted grey with bulging canvas couches and glass cabinetry and all sorts of nick-nacks shut away behind panelling. Meanwhile, the bathroom is decorated in a dark, chocolate brown (yes, even the bath and sinks), while the floor is incongruously carpeted. But at least the hall and the stairway have a rich, red and orange patterned carpet, which reminds me strongly of a river of molten lava flowing downstream.

There will be many memories made and formed here in the coming years. Since my mum and dad are often working overtime, I stay at my granny’s a lot in my early years. But in my first memories here, dim and crispy with static interference, my granny is holding me and rocking me in her arms. We are together on one of the two big, comfy armchairs in the sitting room, and I am gazing up at the stippled ceiling as she sings a lullaby in a soft, gentle voice, adapted just for me:

“Cally bally, Cally bally bee,
Sittin on yer granny’s knee,
Greetin for a wee bawbee,
Tae buy some sugar candy.”

And my eyes would close, and I would drift into sleep, and I would be warm and cosy and praised as the most amazing wee boy in the whole wide world.