Herebemonsters is six again today. It’s not often I’m nice to (or indeed about) him but seeing as how its his birthday and seeing as how I didn’t send him a card (still working on it bro) I suppose that I can justify breaking the big sister code and saying something nice about him.

He is wonderful. He hasn’t got a clue just how wonderful he really is (which is probably a blessing because he’d be quite unliveable with if he did) but that just adds to his charm. He’s amazing, he’s fantastic, whenever there is danger he is there… oh hang on that’s dangermouse. Anyway I love him to bits, more than I’d ever tell him but no more than he deserves. To cut a long story short - I think that he is the best brother any sister could ever have. If I ever had to pick a brother out - then he would be the brother I would pick.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEREBEMONSTERS! may this be the year that all your dreams come true and all your nightmares vanish with the dawn

Hxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ps. Mum says the same thing - except obviously she means son instead of brother!

OK. F wasn’t making it up. I thought he was. I thought it was just one of those sorts of things that guys said to girls when they were trying to impress them. It wasn’t. It was a true story.

He got most of it wrong mind you. N told me the real story while she was visiting. It wasn’t his godfather; it was his great-uncle on his mother’s side and he didn’t have a broken ankle, it was a broken leg. But he did cycle from Marseilles to Toulon (and in midsummer as well) to visit F’s mum and her new baby.

One of the reasons why I’d never paid the story much attention when F first told it to me was the fact that at the time I’d been neither to Marseille or Toulon, nor travelled on the road that links them. So I didn’t realise that the distance was a neat 64.6km (I’ve just looked it up) one way and of course I’d never even considered the fact that he’d have to cycle back as well; which makes it approximately an eighty mile round trip. Neither did I realise that the temperature in July, in the South of France, gets a bit warm. I was from Newcastle. What did temperaturesin the high 70’s mean to me? If we could wear t-shirts in July without getting frostbite we thought it was a warm day. The four degree increase in temperature in summer between the North and South of England had been the equivalent of moving to tropical climes as far as I was concerned.

So, at the time I didn’t pay much attention to F’s tale. Yes, I thought it was lovely that this great-uncle had made the effort to go visit a newly born baby and yes I thought that the fact that he did so was even more impressive owing to the fact he had a broken leg at the time, but other than thinking it a nice story about a nice gesture which demonstrated that F came from a loving and close-knit family I paid it little heed.

F had prefaced this story with all this other stuff too. Which I’d more or less ignored. Something about Cayenne and Papillon. Butterflies and pepper. That made a lot of sense to me; so I ignored it.

At the time I hadn’t read the book and I hadn’t seen the film and I hadn’t been born with an instinctive knowledge of famous French criminals - in fact other than knowing that the Krays really loved their old mum, my knowledge of the criminal classes was confined to M who lived up the road and who cut her speed with vitamin C (she was a very motherly dealer). Then, a ittle later on when F’s mum mentioned the story I learnt that Cayenne was the French version of Alcatraz and that Papillon had escaped from it.

And now, a fortnight ago, thanks to FN’s recommendation I read Papillion (if you haven’t read it, read it immediately got to be one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read) and now I know the full tale. F’s great-uncle had been sent to Cayenne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Island at the same time as Papillon and had known him quite well. At the end of the war the colony had been closed down and F’s uncle had returned to Marseilles. N did tell me what he was called but I’ve forgotten, I’ll check with F’s mum when she next calls it either began with a Fab or a Deg.

Now of course I’m older and although I’m interested in the link from the book to reality, I’m much more touched by the bonds and ties and love which compelled an elderly man with a broken leg to cycle eighty miles in order to see a new born baby.

I’ve got it. I’ve sussed their little game. Admittedly it took me nearly two weeks but I’ve finally worked it out. Oh, they’re clever these ones are. Not your normal run of the mill in-laws. Rather than concentrate on the immediate effects that downright unreasonableness can get you, they’ve decided to go for the long haul and inflict psychological damage of the lasting kind. It’s very simple once you work it out. First they get you het up and worried about the thought of 4 extra people visiting a two bedroom flat and then they lull you into a sense of false security when they arrive by being all nice and helpful and fun to be around and then whoosh! They bugger off to their own homes as if they have nothing better to do with their lives than go back to work and to school and suchlike, leaving you with an apartment that’s too quiet and peaceful and empty and big by half.

Not only that but as a final parting blow N not only stripped all the beds they’d used and put the sheets and towels into the washer, deflated the airbed and left the front room and the bathroom cleaner than it was when they’d arrived (and I’d scrubbed both rooms from top to bottom), but she’d also gone to the shop before we woke up, made fresh coffee, washed the glasses from the night before (it had been a conversation till 5am sort of night) and had the effrontery to have bought me a present (and the sort of present that shows that they actually took the time to think of something that I’d like) to thank me for all my I’d done to look after
them and giving them a lovely holiday. The grateful, well-mannered downright loving sods. Don’t they have any idea of how to behave?

You’d think that, nearly two years on, people would have altered a bit. Not dramatically, a few minor character changes would have sufficed. After all in the ensuing two years, this particular couple have got married and bought a house (they very sensibly had the child some time before that) and surely these sort of “life choices” leave some sort of deep impression on the psyche else why do people make such a song and dance about them?

But they haven’t. Not one bit. From the moment they all (N – F’s sister, her husband F (the F stands for a different F than F’s F does if that makes sense) his seventeen year old daughter M and his and N’s eight year old son who’s initial is also M) walked into the apartment I could tell that they hadn’t changed a bit. Here they are, staying in my house for almost two weeks and here’s me running around like the proverbial blue arsed fly trying to make sure that everyone is having a good time and eating enough and getting enough rest and do they appreciate it?

Yes. They bloody do.

It’s unnatural that’s what it is. The point of having in-laws is to have a whole new family to fight with. I’d been practising my long suffering, slumped shouldered, bravely smiling through it all martyred air ever since i heard that they were visiting. I’d perfected the art of the hissed “they’re your bloody relatives” which is the cry uttered by women throughout the ages in such trying circumstances.

Almost arguing with N over the fact that she will insist on doing the washing up after every meal (not because she doesn’t think I do it right but because she genuinely wants to help) does not count. People can be so selfish.

Nan was a looker when she was young. No mistake, I’ve seen the photos. Very much of her time, all victory roll and flashing eyes, new look curves and lips so red they blaze through black and white. And she could dance. Man could she dance. Rock, reggae, trance, dance, swing, jive, disco, waltz, cha cha, rumba, jitterbug, jazz, quickstep, two step, foxtrot, doesn’t matter what you put on, 76 isn’t her age it’s her BPM. “I was better when I was younger, when you get old your knees go” she says as she kicks her height and sashays past in search of the chocolate biscuits. “ The professional dancers used to pick me out at the dances” she says “that’s how people learnt the new dances that came in – the professional dancers used to show them to the rest of the dancers and they always picked me because I could get them quick. Oh and the clothes” she says. “Nothing like the rubbish you buy nowadays. I had an emerald green silk with a nipped in waist and huge gypsy skirts with braid round the hem, a black coat with jet buttons that fitted like a matadors and we wore great big gypsy earrings that touched our shoulders and snoods that caught our hair and great rows of beads that we were sent from all over the world and seamed stocking with patent leather anklestrap shoes. Proper film stars we looked. Like Jean Harlow or Betty Grable - although my legs were better than hers (it’s true – her legs still are better). It’s not like it is now. I’m sorry for your generation. You don’t know how to have a good time like we did. You lot can’t dance. Every night of the week we were out. The Oxford on a Sunday, the Miners on Monday, Tuesday was Burnopfield Dance and Thursday was the Social, Friday was Tiffany’s and Saturday Blaydon Burn”

“What about Wednesday?” I ask, although I know the answer.

“Wednesday I washed my hair and had an early night” she says “I did have to work you know. Double shifts at Sinclairs, the cigarette factory on the coast road and it didn’t matter if there’d been a raid the night before – we had to go into work straight from the shelters. Not that we ever went into them mind. I know you were supposed to but we just sat in the garden and listened to the ack ack guns and watched the searchlights go up. That was good job. I worked on the rollers, packing the baccy as it came off and I gave me mother my pay packet every week, and then we got a bonus if productivity went up, and all the cigarettes we could smoke - mind you me mother never knew I smoked, I used to hang out of the bedroom window and drop the stubs in the gutter, there was hell to pay when the drain got blocked up. By the way our H, I don’t mind if you have one, I won’t criticise anyone for having a smoke, I still miss it and I’ve been given up ten years – and our mam, your gran, used to use our bonuses to buy our winter coats. But I had to give up when I married your granddad because you weren’t allowed to work there once you were wed.”

I stay quiet. I know what’s coming next and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“Romeo they called him. The camp. The whole camp. 2000 people, Russkies and Germans and Eyeties and Latvians and Polacks and god knows where they all came from but whenever anyone wanted your grandpa that’s what they’d shout “Hey Romeo! Right across the camp. He was a good looking lad your grandpa” I look across to the big black and white photo that takes pride of place on the panelled wall, the one dad had enlarged from an old snapshot. There he is, Hey Romeo himself. And he is. Nearly sixty years on. He’s a Romeo. Not a day over 21 with movie star looks. Sparkling eyes and dark dark hair in that rumpled 40’s style, cur short at the back and a long fringe that falls across one eye and a smile that’s just plain wicked. Hell he’s even got a dimple in his chin. Bloody hell. Romeo.

“I remember this night” she says topping up the tea. “We’d been to the Burnopfield dance and it’s a good eleven miles away and I promised me mother faithfully that I’d be home by eleven o clock. But by the time the dance ended it was that time already and there was no way that I was going to get home on time, and there we all were – about 30 of us and there’s no buses back at that hour and even if there had been we couldn’t have afforded them, so we had to walk and we got nearer the camp and they put their jackets with the badges back on because they had to wear badges you know so that we knew they were displaced persons except everyone gave them proper clothes to wear because you can’t be having people wearing badges. So we walked back to the camp and T –your grandpa said “ I take you home M” just like that, because his English wasn’t very good yet, and as we got up the gates to the camp they all said “shush”, so I shushed and then he said “you wait here” so I waited just outside the gates of the camp and they very quietly climbed over the gates because they were locked you know and if they’d been caught they would have been in trouble and then the gates opened and I saw the lot of them very quietly pushing this army truck through the gates.”

And I nearly choke out on my tea because the thought of twenty odd eyeties and Russkies and Latvians and Polacks and god knows what nationality they all were, very quietly and on tiptoe, pushing a stolen army truck out of a holding camp for displaced persons is an image that’s …hell you imagine it.

“Anyway” she says “so they push the truck out of the gates and roll it a bit of a way past them too and then they all pile into the back, all twenty odd of them, and its just me and your grandpa and Molotov, he was a Russian so they all called him Molotov - he married E who lives over the way there, mind he had a temper, E had a terrible time with him, I used to meet her on the bus coming back from Blaydon and she’d say “our M – they’re not like us, they have black moods” and I’d look at her and say “but you wouldn’t swap him would you E? “ and she’d sigh and say “eeh no”. Anyway Molotovs in the front because he’s the only one out of them who can drive but the problem is that he’s dead short. So he had to sit on an orange box to reach the steering wheel and to work the pedals he had to slide off the box and so they started up the engine – your grandpa did something to it so it could start without keys, he was always good with engines your grandpa - and the rest of them in the back are just this mass of arms and legs because there’s not really room for them all, and they’re all saying “shush” really loudly when the engine starts. So we go through the Gill and all the lights are going on at the sound of a truck rolling past at past midnight and we go through Lockhaugh and its all going really well till we get to Stampy Moss bank which is really steep.”

I look out of the window down to Stampy Moss bank and it is really really steep, about a 50 degree angle. It’s beloved by Jboy because it has a rapid down hill slope ending in a cambered curve which, if you hit it right will slingshot you up the next half mile incline (which is the really really steep bit), and if you hit it wrong will see you in the NHS’s finest for at least three months.

“And somehow Molotov fell off the box. One moment he’s on the box, the next he’s vanished somewhere below the drivers seat and the box has fallen on top of him so we’re going up Stampy Moss Bank and he’s trying to get back onto the seat but he can’t because the box is on him and every time he’s trying to get up he’s hitting the accelerator or the brake and the truck’s either going really fast or almost stopping. And then I get the giggles and everyone in the back starts saying “shush” really loudly and I thought this is it I’m going to die but at least I’d die laughing and you know we’ve all got to die sometime and there’s worse ways. Anyway eventually Molotov climbs back into the driving seat and we get back to my house. They stop the truck a little way up the road so that me mother doesn’t suspect anything, I knew me dad would be fine with me being so late because he never ever lost his temper – he used to say “pet, there’s always two sides to every story and if you start shouting then you’ll never ever hear the other side” - and I turn to T , your grandpa, and say “ I’d better go in now” and he says “no, I walk you to your door” just like that because his English wasn’t very good and everyone in the back of the trucks says “shush” really loudly and so he walks me across the road – from where the garage is now and down the garden path and just as I reach the door it opens just a bit and me mother grabs me by my elbow and says “You. Inside. Now.” and then she looks at your grandpa and says “don’t you come here ever again” and then she shuts the door in his face and I can hear from across the road all them in the back of the truck saying “shush” really loudly and then, when the door closes she turns to me and says “you’re not seeing him anymore, he’s far too good looking, he’ll break your heart”

“And that’s when you knew he was the one, Nan” I say reaching for another chocolate biscuit because everyone knows that chocolate eaten at grandparents doesn’t count.

“Oh no” says my Nan “I knew that from the first time I saw him. I can’t explain it. Something just clicked. He stood in front of me and asked me to dance and that was it. That was the thing about them foreigners, they had such lovely manners, they hit their heels together and bowed when they asked you to dance, not like the English with their d’yah wanna dance theyn” and then leaving you on the dance floor once the song was done. But your grandpa. I can’t explain it. Something just clicked in my head and that was it. He was the one” says Nan as she pours out more tea and I agree with her as I reach for another cup.

“And you know what our H” she says. “When push came to shove he was a better son to my parents than their own son was and I can forgive the rages and all his black moods because when you think about it he was taken away from his parents when he was a bairn and that’s got to affect you for the rest of your life and if I had it all to do again, right from that moment when he asked me to dance, I’d do it all again. Exactly the same. We fought like cat and dog for fifty odd years. But whenever I needed him or my family needed him – he was there. Always. If we were ill, if we needed a lift, whatever I needed or they needed he was there. Straightaway. No if’s buts or maybes. We had some stonking fights.” she says with a giggle that’s not a day over seventeen. But you need that. That’s passion and if you haven’t got passion our H – then you haven’t got a life. And right at the end” she says “when his mind was gone from the Alzheimer’s and he couldn’t even speak in English any more and I was sitting by the hospital bed I’d say to him “are ye not sick of ‘is yet?” and he’d grab my arm and look at me and shake his head really hard, just like that, and I’d give anything, anything at all to have him right here now, sitting in that chair”

And I choke at that because grandparents aren’t meant, aren’t supposed to know about passion.