When is the love for our grandchildren not quite as unconditional as usual?
When they’re wee, you’ve dragged oot every toy and game in the hoose – especially those with hunners of separate bitties – then it’s time to go. Here’s me: “OK, babes, let’s start to clear up.” They disappear like sna’ aff a dyke.
Drag ‘em back: “I’ll give a prize to whoever does the most.” They attempt to skedaddle again. So, like the perfect Nana I am, I end up scraiking and threatening, flinging all the stuff away masellie, while they, totally unfazed or frightened, watch CBeebies. Aaargh!
Not that I’m a cleaning freak. Far from it. All I ask is that most of the hoose is reasonably tidy, while only I know there are Hidden Middens.
My main glory hole has just enough room for a single bed, desk and computer. When my grandloon was wee, he suddenly referred to it as “the pokey room”, and so it has remained. The bed is my ever-enlarging junkyard, piled high with stuff from years ago and forgotten Christmas presents I should use but never muster the energy for.
Then, a couple of Wednesdays ago, the toots came in from school and I made suggestions as to what we could do. Sez my grandquine: “Would you like us to clear the pokey room?” You could have knocked me doon with a duster. So, suspecting I’d have to clear up the mess after, I armed them with black bags, one of those handheld hoovers, and shut the door.
Pooterin’ on with my cooking, I forgot all about them. About an hour later, they trundled into the kitchen with a kirn of packed black plastic. Through I goes to inspect the damage. Readers, I was dumfoonert!
The bed was like the day I bought it. Floor cleared. Pokey looking twice its size. I was ower the moon, barely believing the young ‘uns could do such a superb job, including a bag of stuff they didn’t know whether or not was chuckable. Good thinking, guys.
Changed days from the babes who wouldn’t clear away a piece of Lego. So, I paid them a pucklie pounds each.
Panic over precious papers
A few days later, sitting at my desk to do a bit of work, I went to the open shelf at the side where all my essential papers are. Looked in and all I could see were ancient computer plugs and coil. I suddenly felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Oh. My. Lord. Please, no.
Had the the kids’ enthusiastic chuckings-oot graduated from the bed to desk? Losh, I never told them not to touch it. Had all my vital tax, insurance and bank documents disappeared with the scaffies last Friday?
Heart in my moo. Hot sweat. Musn’t tell the kids.
Like a mad thing, I oot with the cables and… there they were. All my precious papers, neatly piled up. I’m soo prood of my junk-busters. In fact, I’m willing to rent them out for a not unreasonable sum…
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press & Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970
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