He Takes No Lip off Nobody..

Tonight there was a program on the TV, and a girl was trapped in a broken down car with her Gran. The Gran was sitting in the back yapping away and the girl was sitting in the front, driven insane by the Gran. As they pulled her from the car... she kept repeating, "she won't stop talking, she won't stop talking about people I don't even know,but I know all about them..."

And I laughed til i farted.

When I was younger, I did as I was told; I pretty much do as I am told now, but back then I agreed to actions I pretty much would not undertake now.

One of those things was to visit a church friend of my mum, pretty regularly, and engage this little old lady in conversation for an hour or so of a weekend afternoon.

I would go up, and she would be delighted to see me, welcome me in and make me a cup of tea in a china cup (with saucer), and lay out some biscuits. Then she would sit in her chair and she would start.

You know that feeling when you are in a class and you drift off somewhere in your head, and then suddenly you are brought back to earth by the teacher screaming at you "And the answer is...." and you realise you have missed the last ten minutes of the conversation, and your insides drop as low as they can in your belly, before bouncing up and hitting off your ribs?

Well that probably happened to me about 6 times every visit.

She would tell me some story of when she was a young lady, and it would set something off in my head (typically wondered if she had ever, ever had sex a boyfriend), and then she would ask me, "do you remember?" I would look at her quizzically, and she would say, "the blacksmith, remember, the blacksmith, with the grey horse; he used to stable it behind where Cowan's Pram shop was", and I would look at her and say, "I don't remember a blacksmith behind where Cowan's was."

And she would say, "are you not listening? the blacksmith wasn't there, he stabled his horse there, the horse that pulled his cart". And I would say, "but I wasn't alive when horses pulled carts, other than the Rag and Bone Man, and that was when I was three".

And that would start off another story. "I remember when the Rag and Bone man used to have.... And I would gaze around the room, looking at the occasional furniture and begin to plan my escape.

However that escape always took at least another hour. She would stand between me and the door and continue to talk. Oh heavens I used to dread trying to get home.

When I did leave fresh air was like laughing gas, I would run down the road back to the house delirious in my freedom, giggling at my escape. Duty done for another week.