I tried to interview my grandmother for this blog. I had visions of her telling me her life story until late into the night as I recorded her on my phone, fascinated by her tales of yesteryear and gifting me with pearls of wisdom collected over her 98 years on this earth.

That has not happened.

Everytime I have tried to ask her questions about her life, she shrugs and says she can’t remember. When I press her, she gets annoyed and insists she had a ‘normal’ job, a ‘normal’ life and that everything was ‘normal’. I have had to change tact and casually drop questions into conversation to get some answers. Her responses are never detailed, I can’t tell if it is because she can’t remember or because she can’t be bothered telling those stories again. She is always much more interested in the neighbour’s latest holiday, or what colour bin day it is than telling me what she did for a job. Here are some of the things I have learnt so far:

• Grandma used to work as a secretary in a chemical factory.
• She was a typist and learnt how to type on a typewriter in school.
• She is from London originally, Wembley, but they came ‘up north’ on holidays.
• She met my grandfather through her best friend, Olive, who was his sister.
• She retired at 60.
• She used to smoke, but she stopped the day she retired. She stopped because she couldn’t afford it. When I asked her if it was hard to quit, she shrugged: ‘I just stopped. That was it.’
• She loved to hike. She would still accompany me on my hikes on the moors if she could.
• She used to cook full Christmas lunches for all the family including the Christmas pudding- that she used to make months in advance and hang in the pantry. This explains her insistence on getting a massive turkey every year when there are only 4 of us. She was never much of a baker, my grandfather was in charge of that.
• She once stopped a fire from breaking out in the house when a candle set the Christmas tree alight. She swept the blazing tree up into the carpet and threw it outside. She is now deathly afraid of candles and will not have any in the house.
• She used to steal some nice washcloths from her work because ‘they were nice’.
• She is a dog person.
• She used to watch Wasps rugby club when she was young in London. She still knows the rules and enthusiastically watches rugby world cup matches. She also follows snooker and knows all the rules to that too.
• In any sporting situation, she loves a punch up.
• She loves sweets, Jelly Babies are her favourite.
• She isn’t particularly religious but was raised a Methodist. She can’t elaborate more on what that means but she does her prayers in bed every night. (The first time I heard her whispered prayers in the dead of night, I thought the house was haunted.)
• She used to love travelling, she particularly loves Cyprus.
• My grandparents had a motorbike and sidecar.
• She wants wine and garlic at her funeral – she thought my suggestion of getting a wine bottle coffin commissioned was a good idea.

I share this as a gentle reminder to us all that the people we care for are just that- people. With lives and feelings, we’re too quick to forget that sometimes when life gets busy and we’re tired or stressed. Especially older people, I know all too well how frustrating looking after them can be, but it isn’t their fault they’re slower on their feet or are sick, remembering that they are people too would go a long way to treat them with more respect and decency in our current society. We’re all going to become the old people we complain about, it would be good to remember that they too were young once and had interesting lives.

Right, I’m off to Google novelty coffins.