Grandfatha's Fatha

Like nations, families have their myths that reinforce the bonds of kinship; this blog is, in fact, named after the idea that national myths do just this, except on a larger scale. Like national myths, family myths are just as prone to distortion and exaggeration, not to mention suppression... It should be emphasised here that the word myth should not be taken to imply no connection with the actual facts.

One of the many joys about taking my grandfather to Russia - he's 87, you know - was the chance to hear more of these; whether his son and daughter-in-law were quite so keen to have the familiar stories recapped for the nth time - on the same journey, mark you - remains unclear. Grandad's natural father died when my grandfather was quite young, and his mother remarried; his stepdad was the spitting image of Michael Palin: there's a fabulous picture of him stood arms akimbo, sleeves rolled up, fag dangling on his lip; there's another of him on my grandad's touring bike, with the point of the saddle almost between his shoulder blades - my grandfather has always been a tall man. When the family moved back to Calverley from Leicester, my great-grandfather, now a widower, came with them.

He was an eccentric man, by all accounts, but then again aren't we all? Well, in fact, no: I'm perfectly normal, thank you; you're a bit odd; he's a bloody weirdo. He'd lived in Calverley for over 20 years by the time he died, but always played the stranger role, unable to offer directions. One fine day, he was asked for Thornhill Street, and gave his stock answer: "I'm sorry, I'm a stranger here myself. Maybe this lady can help," he continued, and gestured to someone coming down the street, who happened to be his next-door neighbour. She gave a funny look and the required directions, then turned to G-GF and said "You daft bugger, you live there."

In his retirement, he turned to cultivating his own tobacco. I'm sure they've made this illegal by now, but it was apparently a common hobby fifty or so years ago, with even a Society of Amateur Tobacco Growers being founded. His plants came on well, but apparently at some stage or another the leaves need to be pressed; I should know this, I used to work in a tobacco factory. It wasn't a good place to try quitting: like the proverbial chocolate factory, you could smoke as much as you liked while you were there, but couldn't take any home. To the extent that you were supposed to check in your fag packets at the gatehouse, and sign them out again in the evening.

Anyway, it so happened that they were relaying the road outside his house, so he chatted up the steamroller operator, and got him to do the necessary. I gather he got a good smoke, in the end. But a friend of mine has a much worse story about grandfathers, cigarettes and steamrollers: his grandfather used to drive the steamroller for the council; every morning, he would go to the depot, collect the vehicle, and drive it to wherever he was needed. The depot was up a dead-end street, at the other end there was a newsagent on the corner. Our hero would set the machine in motion, and, when he got to the turn, put a bit of lock on the steering, and nip in through the side door. The newsagent would have twenty Woodbine and a box of matches waiting for him on the counter, he'd step up smartly, put down his two and six, pick up his smokes, step smartly out through the front door and hop back onto the steamroller which would by this time have lumbered round the corner, and off they would go, puffing out clouds of smoke in harmony. This all went swimmingly, right up to the day when it didn't: for some reason, our man misjudged his hop onto the machine, and went under the rear roller; of course, now that there was no-one to steer, the steamroller carried on turning, and demolished the newsagent's as well. Remember, kids, smoking is dangerous.