I remember sitting on my Nan’s draining board. Don’t worry it’s dry. Nan’s lifted me up there to watch her make the sandwiches on the worktop next to it. We’re going on a picnic and she’s preparing the food. It’s the same routine every bank holiday. She reaches into the bread bin (do people still have these?) and pulls out a loaf of Brace’s thick-sliced white bread. She’s the only person I know with a breadbin, Mum just keeps ours in the cupboard with the toaster, the toaster with the ears wheat on the side.
She grabs the butter dish – see previous statement about breadbins. It’s stainless steel with the little wooden handle on top. I watch as she butters the rounds and places them on top of each other, butter to butter. Then she goes to the cupboard and returns with a tin of corned beef. My Nan loves corned beef. I don’t think I’ve ever had a sandwich in my Nan’s house that wasn’t either corned beef, or pink salmon, which Nan insists on plastering with white pepper and vinegar. It’s not until years later I learn salmon doesn’t in fact taste like Sarson’s.
I hate the bones, but Nan says they’ll make me brainy, and to demonstrate, crunches one as she picks them out. If someone’s coming, Nan puts out red salmon so people think she’s posh, and puts it on top of white baps instead of bread. I already know my Nan’s posh because we take our shoes off by the door, and she has those little lace things on the arms and back of her settee. And no party buffet plate graces the table in my Nannie Gwen’s house until it has a paper doily. (Again, can you still buy those?) She reminds me a bit of the queen, or Mrs Bucket – who at this point I only know as the funny lady who falls in the hedge when the dog barks out the car.
Watching my Nannie in the kitchen was always an education and I remember being intrigued by the corned beef tin (it still flummoxes me a little why it’s packed like this). We (my brother and I) were never allowed anywhere near the corned beef tin apart from helping to turn the key because we would either a) cut our hands off, or b) slice our fingers open, and so corned beef preparation – much like opening the oven (“You will burn yourself”), or receiving post though the letterbox (“You’ll be glad not to get post soon enough”) – was reserved for adults. Even now, I still have a slight fear about corned beef tins and handle them like an expert on the antiques roadshow lest my wrist get’s anywhere near it. I even wonder if I should wrap them in paper or something before recycling in case someone (binman, skip diver etc) severs a limb because they haven’t been alerted to its presence.
I remember my Nannie cursing when the key would snap and she’d have to try to open the tin with a tin opener, which of course is awkward due to its corners, or when the tin had no key at all. But so prevalent was the use of corned beef in her kitchen, that she kept a spare key in her cutlery drawer (the one that to open you had to lift the drawer while simultaneously pressing your hip into the other cupboard door next to it).
Anyway, Nan lets me, under the utmost supervision, turn the key but not quite to the end. She then prizes it out from the tin using a knife with that great squelching noise. Thick slices are cut (well sort of scraped as it’s so soft) and sandwiches are made, cut into triangles. They taste better that way somehow. Then she boils the kettle to make the tea. Unless tea is nuclear hot, Nan nor Mum will drink it. She brews it up in a teapot – also stainless steel –before tipping it into a Thermos flask – orange with a brown lid that I reckon she’s had since the 60s. Finally, she carefully clings the sarnies with a deftness that only comes from working in a canteen for years.
We load everything in the boot of the car, deckchairs, blanket, food and flask and set off, Mum, my brother, Nan and me. We stop to pick up my Aunty Hazel on the way. She’s not really my aunty, she’s my great aunty as she’s my Nannie Gwen’s sister. I know what she will have brought. Fruit cake. She always brings fruit cake. Although I don’t complain because it’s delicious and I know exactly what will happen.
We’re heading for somewhere green, my brother having planned the route and navigating for my Mum. Aunty Hazel is full of great advice on every trip and this one is no exception, she tells us “We used to write down the names of all the places we had to go on a trip, and if we didn’t arrive at one of them, we knew we were lost”. It didn’t make sense to me then, and it still doesn’t now.
We arrive and park overlooking a reservoir. Or at least that’s what I think we’re looking at from the split second the windscreen is cleared by the wipers as the rain teems down. Nan tells us she’s never trusted that Michael Fish to tell the truth and much prefers Ian McCaskill even though his glasses always look like they need cleaning. Mum contorts herself to put on her Pac a Mac and nips to the boot to retrieve the food and flask, before jumping back in like a strange version of the Krypton Factor – only my Mum is a secretary, not a systems analyst or a would-be SAS operative. She unwraps bone china cups from a tea towel – Nan refuses to have plastic – and pours a little milk in each from an old Panda Pop bottle Nan has very handily decanted the milk into, before pouring on tea. It tastes like metal or like the bag has been left in too long… it tastes like a picnic.
We drink it as Nan unclings the sarnies, the bread now slightly sweaty and a little squashed. We eat them with a bag of Salt ’n’ Shake crisps. Aunty hazel unwraps her fruit cake and tries to cut it with a little souvenir knife the size of a nail file. The little faux bone handle showing a picture of Dunster Castle. As usual, it crumbles everywhere, leaving my Nan picking crumbs off herself the rest of the car journey, by wetting her finger and dabbing them off her skirt.
Picnic finished, Mum tips the dregs of the tea out the door and rushes to the little bin with the rubbish. None of us otherwise leaves the car, and we head home.
My Mum’s side of my family has always been singers. Not that they can sing, just that they do sing, a lack of music, microphone… ability not hindering them in the slightest. As such, I can never remember a car journey without singing. It’s a steady competition between my Aunty Hazel and my Nan as to who can start the singing off first. My Nan gets in there first this time. She’s sitting in the back, squishing me in the middle between her and Aunty hazel – they look weirdly similar from my viewpoint. We all know what Nan’s going to sing, it’s always the same song, and we join in “Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed”.
We drop Aunty Hazel off and then head back to Nan’s. Of course, the sun is shining beautifully when we pull up outside and as we get the unused deckchairs and blanket out of the boot, Nan explains, “It’s come out for all those people going to church”. We carry the bits inside (shoes off) and then immediately say our goodbyes and head out the door (shoes on again).
Nan asks us to take the rubbish out. “Be careful you don’t swing that bag too much” she shouts behind us, “there’s a corned beef tin in there and it’ll cut your legs open if you’re not careful!”
