When I was very small, my Grandad was my world. I lived with my parents, but visited him often.
One of my earlier memories concerning how powerful his influence was over my infant life can be summed up in a rhyme he taught me (very naughty of him).
I recited the rhyme whilst hiding under the dining table at home. I remember believing I couldn’t be heard because I was hidden under the table.
The rhyme:
I’m a little boy scout and I don’t swear.
Shit, bugger, arsehole, I don’t care!
Oh boy… EXTREMELY naughty swear-words from a 3-year-old.
As I grew, he taught me lots of rhymes and thankfully, I learned that the ‘ostrich’ method of hiding does not work – just because I can’t see them, doesn’t mean they can’t hear me!
Here is a collection of the rhymes I remember from my Grandad.
Mary had a little lamb,
She tied it to a pylon,
10,000 volts shot up its arse,
and turned its wool to nylon.
Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a bear,
I’ve often seen her little lamb,
I’ve never seen her bear.
(Think about that one, say it out loud… I’ll wait.)
Mary had a metal cow,
She milked it with a spanner,
Milk came out in shilling cans,
And little ones, a tanner.
(A ‘tanner’ was the slang term for a small denomination coin in the UK - a sixpence – see picture.)
Mary had a little lamb,
It had a sooty foot,
And everywhere that Mary went,
Its sooty foot, it put.
Then there were the nonsense rhymes. Paradoxical, mind-boggling rhymes that I couldn’t help remembering.
One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead men got up to fight.
Back to back, they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
I went to the pictures tomorrow,
I got a front seat at the back.
They gave me some plain cake with currants in,
I ate it and gave it them back.
(pictures = cinema)
I went round a straight corner,
To see a dead donkey die,
I pulled out my knife to shoot it,
It went bow-legged in one eye.
‘Twas Christmas Day in the workhouse,
The snow was raining fast,
A barefooted girl with clogs on,
Came slowly whizzing past.
There’s a fire in the middle of the ocean!
A blind man saw it first,
He told a man with no legs on,
To run and fetch the fire-engine.
The fire-engine was drawn by three dead horses,
Which ran over a dead cat and half-killed it,
It’s now in the hospital,
Drinking at best health,
Expected to die in a moment.
His sense of humour wasn’t saved just for family. He would tease friends and strangers mercilessly too. He had a sarcastic but dry wit and could keep a straight face under any circumstance – which was why he was so very good at cards.
One day someone asked if my dad was related to him as they both had the same surname.
“Only by marriage,” he assured the man.
A week later, the man confronted my Grandad.
“I thought you said you were only related by marriage? He’s your son!”
“Well, if I hadn’t have married his mum, we wouldn’t be related,” he said.
He told me tales that would have horrified my mum if she had heard him telling me. Fireworks lit, placed on the road with a metal lid on top to see how far off the ground it went when the firework fuse burned down. One firework, two… three? He should have been a scientist!
He would take an age to tell me a story, drawing in his audience for the punchline.
“I can prove that spiders’ ears are in their legs,” he told me once.
I frowned in doubt, but he set about proving his theory with a tale from his childhood.
“I sat all through science lesson one day, my hand cupped on top of the desk. The teacher looked over at me a few times and finally lost patience. ‘What are you doing? You are supposed to be conducting your own experiment. Get on with your work!’ the teacher said. ‘But sir, I’ve got my experiment here.’ I said. ‘Show me,’ he said. So I showed him.”
“I lifted my hand and said ‘GO!’ and the spider scurried away. I dragged it back and pulled off one leg. Then I let it go again and said ‘GO!’ and off it scurried. I dragged it back and pulled off another leg and said, ‘GO!’ and the spider dragged itself limping across the table. I dragged it back, pulled off another leg, let it loose and said, ‘GO!’ The teacher was becoming a little annoyed but I assured him I had a point,” Grandad said.
I sat rapt with attention, worrying about the poor spider, but so curious about the experiment.
“The spider hauled itself away from me and I dragged it back again, pulled off another leg and let it loose once more, ‘GO!’ I said. It dragged itself away once more and I fetched it back. I saw the warning look of the teacher but I ignored him and removed one more of the spider’s legs. It had three left and it struggled to get away from me, but it tried.”
He paused and I couldn’t help being impatient to know what the experiment was and the conclusions Grandad drew from it.
“So, the spider had two legs left and the teacher had a hard time stopping himself from sending me to the headmaster for the cane. I pulled off one more leg and said, ‘GO!’ and the spider dragged itself away from me. I pulled it back, pulled off the last leg and said, ‘GO!’ – nothing happened. I said it again, ‘GO!’ but the spider stayed where I had put it. ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘My experiment proves that a spider’s ears are in its legs. See? It’s deaf.’ I got the cane for that one,” Grandad said.
Disclaimer: No spiders were harmed during this story.
My Grandad had ultimate patience and we would go for long walks in the Derbyshire countryside. He seemed to know what every tree and plant was, what properties it possessed, what it could be used for and I hung on his every word.
He died before my daughter had chance to get to know him properly. I know that he would have been just as great an influence in her life as he was in mine.
All images (except the sixpences) are from Pixabay.com