WHAT I remember about my grandmother is that when I was little, she seemed so very tall and, when I was grown, she seemed so small.
The changing height of adults was always such a wonder, as a child.
In lieu of a father, my gran was my second parent. Taken for granted, like a parent, and stumbling to keep up, like a parent. My vegetarianism was met with chicken dinners and when I, in teenage pretentiousness, switched to green tea she would put milk in it. I drank milky green tea every night for years, the colour of tinned peas, so as not to offend her efforts.
Gran fed me furtive cake, a Battenburg slice here and a Mr Kipling apple pie there. Occasionally her scones or melting moments when the church had a coffee morning and a baker's dozen was made.
She was my absolute champion and I could do no wrong afore her. Apart from in matters of dress. She would often send me to change: "Is that what you're wearing?" Or looked me up and down with a "I see you haven't had time to wash your hair today". Appearance was vital, her tastes tastefully extravagant.
We matched each other in gluttony, sharing tea and hot buttered toast every evening, the toast browned on the same grill she'd had since the 1950s. When I was ill it was to my gran's I went for recuperation. When my friend Janet fell out with her mum it was to my gran's she went for similar toast and (black) tea treatment.
Her home had a particular smell and her carpets a particular swirl no longer seen in modern lounges.
When I was a student we met every week in Buchanan Bus Station next to the Wincher's Stance, the bronze of two seethearts meeting after some time apart. The lady of the pair wears a bunnet much like the bunnet my gran wore each morning as she strode to the corner shop to take her paper. Every time I see that statue, still, I see the haze of my gran standing next to it in her blue skirt suit and pearls and I am compelled to hug it, just to see if it has that old familiar smell of Chanel No 5 and Lilly of the Valley.
We'd go for lunch and then to Top Shop for me and M&S for her. I should have guessed there was something wrong when she became coy about trying on clothes. I should have guessed, but then, it took the GP a few goes to diagnose the breast cancer. She would have been suffering for such a long time, too embarrassed or afraid to say something. Women of that generation were not open about their bodies.
She didn't want treatment so we nursed her at home, the women of the family, as women do. My mother and her sisters nursing, and I keeping watch.
One night, in the hospital bed brought into her living room, I was reading while she dozed. In her sleep she said: "I don't know what I'm still here for." She died while I popped to Tesco for red peppers.
I visited her in her coffin to ask her questions I didn't manage to ask while she was alive but she wasn't there, just the fragile carcass picked over by the cancer.
At Restaurant 34 in Mayfair Kate Moss is to launch a coupe moulded to her left breast. My grandmother would have been faintly scandalised by this, a woman allowing all and sundry to sip from her cup. The scandal now is not in the readily available bosom but in the shameful decadence, vintage Champagne sipped from a supermodel.
It's a wonder, when body parts are otherwise to openly discussed, that Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this month, still must urge women to be aware of their bodies. Of course, it's about so much more, screening, fundraising. But awareness is key and the confidence to talk openly.
I hope my dear gran would be pleased to see this cultural shift.
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