[alli55]

We went to visit the girls’ Granny and Grampy on Sunday; or as we generally refer to my parents, Granny and Grumpy! It wasn’t something any of us really looked forward to, particularly not me. My Mam, Granny to the kids, is a lovely, kind-hearted mother, and a doting grandmother, and the girls love her to bits! But my Dad, well! He’s always been, shall we say, forthright in his views and not reticent about expressing them; but as he’s got older, he’s become more and more intolerant. It’s like he’s modelled himself on Victor Meldrew, but without the comedy mayhem to break up the constant grumbling! It’s got even worse since Maddie discovered how easily she could wind him up, and how much fun it was to then watch him ‘go off on one’ as she so eloquently puts it!

True to form, my Dad was reading the Mail on Sunday when we arrived. “Look at this!” he exploded, shortly after we’d walked in and sat down. He turned the paper towards me and Phil, allowing us to read the headline: ‘Outrage at Channel 4 show’. Below it was a picture of the new-look Matt, following his radical makeover at the hands of Shanice and Digger. Turning the paper back, Dad summarised the article for our benefit. “They made a young girl get a tattoo all the way up her arm, and they showed a man having his eyebrow pierced live on TV! Can you believe it?!”

Nice to see the Mail reporting things with their usual unbiased, accurate journalistic skill!

“Who watches this rubbish?” he continued.

I shot Phil a warning look that screamed “don’t you dare!” loudly and clearly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Phil I needed to worry about!

Lissie had been delayed coming in by the arrival of a message from Luisa, one of her schoolfriends, that she’d decided was important enough and urgent enough to require an immediate phone call in return. So, she’d stayed outside while me, Phil, and Maddie had gone in. Having made her call, she then entered the lion’s den. Going across to say hello to her Grampy, she spotted the picture on the front of his newspaper. Before I could do anything to warn her or stop her, she said, “Oh, there’s Matt!”

My Dad looked at her, his facial muscles not knowing what to do, since they were unclear what expression he required. “You watch this programme, Melissa?” he asked.

I was frantically shaking my head, but she hadn’t looked my way by the time she answered, “Yeah, it’s wicked!” Maddie, who was sitting directly in my eyeline, looked at me with possibly the most mischievous grin that I’d ever seen on her face!

Grumpy turned to face me. Oh, God, I knew what was coming: another lecture on how my parenting skills were lacking in certain areas. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had that particular conversation!

“Emma!” he began, his brow furrowed in disapproval. “I want to say I’m surprised at you for letting the girls watch rubbish like this, but, quite frankly, I’m not surprised! You’ve always lacked judgement!”

I was having enormous trouble keeping a straight face and suppressing an urgent need to snigger. Not because I wasn’t taking my Dad seriously, although I wasn’t; no, the cause of my strife was my eldest daughter, grinning impishly whilst she admonished me with the wagging of her index finger. Somehow, I held myself together the only way I could: by saying nothing and thinking of something completely off-topic, in this case the various options we had at home for dinner that evening.

When Grumpy realised he wasn’t going to get a response from me, he turned back to his newspaper. It wasn’t much more than 20 seconds before he exploded again. “It gets worse!” he announced. “Apparently, they were discussing the size of a man’s, ... well, you know!”

I watched Maddie and Lissie swap sly glances and stifle giggles.

“What is it coming to?!” he asked, rhetorically. “I mean, is that sort of thing really necessary? There were probably children watching! Well,” he corrected himself, “we know there were children watching, don’t we Emma?!” He gave me another disapproving look.

I shot back a stern look; not at him, but at Maddie, who I could tell had just spotted an opportunity to get Grumpy going properly. The naughty little madam chose to pretend she hadn’t seen me warning her not to do it.

“Why is it so bad for children to know about things like that, Grampy?” she asked, all innocently, whilst her younger sister desperately fought off an attack of the giggles. “I mean, without it, there wouldn’t be children in the first place, would there?!”

Oh, God! Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my Mam purse her lips as she prepared for the tidal wave of apoplexy that would surely surge forth. It did, relentlessly, for the next five minutes or more! In the end, I had to step in and rescue my Dad from the torture that his evil granddaughter was inflicting on him!

“Dad, I need your advice on something,” I told him. “I think I can hear a knocking sound from the engine when I’m driving, can you see what you think?”

Phil was about to wonder aloud just what I was talking about, but stopped when I dug an elbow into his ribs, as gently as I could under the circumstances! I took Grumpy outside to listen for the non-existent noise, whilst Granny found something more constructive for the girls to do with their time!

The following day, after school, Maddie was back round to Stacie’s! This time, when she came home, she had news of Gemma that she could actually share with the rest of us!

“Gemma has been down in London at the studios since Saturday. She hasn’t got back yet,” she said. “Apparently all the daredevils were there all weekend.”

“What on earth are they doing?” wondered Lissie aloud.

By the time Stacie got home from school on Tuesday, with Maddie for company once more, Gemma had been and gone. The only trace of her presence was a rather colourful wash-basin in the bathroom, where the rainbow hairstyle had been removed. Stacie’s Mam revealed that Gemma had gone in to work, so Maddie hung around long enough for Gemma to return. She was to be disappointed, though, because, after saying “hi!” to her and asking after us, Gemma apologised for not being able to talk longer because she had to pack. She was, she told Maddie, off to Glasgow until Friday night, and was then going straight from there to the studio for next week’s show.

Armed with that information, which she dutifully passed on to us, Maddie brought Stacie round to ours after school for most of the rest of the week, much to the delight of Lissie and her friend, Rayna. We have an arrangement with Rayna’s Mam, who is a single-parent, that when she has a week that she has to work the later shift, Rayna comes to us until her Mam picks her up on her way home from work. This was one of those weeks. Lissie and Rayna pumped Stacie for as much information as they could get out of her, but, unfortunately for them, Stacie didn’t know what Gemma was up to this week either.