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.

Too angry to post tonight. Incandescent with rage right now. Will explain all over the next day or so (just as soon as I calm down enough to write something that won’t be self incriminating!)

We don’t know why Auntie J hates the Scots so much. We did have one theory which might have explained it – but Grandma S swears that she never force fed any of her children lumpy porridge through their noses. The jury’s out on whether or not Grandma S is telling the truth – what with our own experiences with the coal shed and the knobbly stick with the traces of flesh and blood on it, we wouldn’t put it past her but, unless we want the Winlaton branch of the WI posse knocking at our doors in the middle of the night and dragging us off to what they euphemistically call their “summer fayre” it’s a theory we don’t mention. Instead we’ve put it down to the fact that she’s just never forgiven them for Bannockburn.

It’s not that she ever says anything bad about the Scots – which just proves that she has more self restraint than most. After all, as subsequent generations of English military commanders have found, the Scots make excellent targets for whatever you want to throw at them. It’s not even that she takes any direct action against them. Although her other half may (or may not be) single-handedly engaged in a series of remarkable successful attempts to remove most of the indigenous fauna (or at least the tasty ones) from the country, we have no reason to assume that this is done with her consent much less her blessing.

But there’s no other reason other than a hatred so vehement that it makes Edward Longshanks look positively genial which even goes part of the way to explain the destruction and carnage that for one day a year she visits on the tight arsed, pursed mouthed, downright miserable sods which clutter up this otherwise beautiful land

As I’ve mentioned before, Auntie J is the mother of the two blonde haired blue eyed chaos makers; otherwise known as my wonderful goddaughter A and my equally wonderful not goddaughter R. I have to attach the adjective wonderful before mentioning them, partly because they’ve trademarked it but mostly because on meeting them you do wonder a number of things. Mostly you wonder where their volume control is hidden.

These are the secret weapons Auntie J utilises against the Scots. Once a year, for one day only she sends them up to visit us. It’s only ever for one day at a time because otherwise all sort of UN regulations concerning the deployment of troops are contravened and it’s seen as a hostile occupation. Armed with digital cameras (ours) they drag us through the streets of Edinburgh snapping at the passers by, laughing at the silly men who wear skirts (and you would think that by now, what with all the magazines around, Scotsmen would realise that, A-line horizontally striped box pleats worn with white knee length socks is an ensemble that only looks good on a 15 year old anorexic and instead given their body shape – if they must explore their feminine side –then they should go for something in a straighter style and a plainer colour. A nice knee length pencil skirt in black for example, always looks smart and skims over those areas that it’s probably best not to draw attention to.) Scattering italics as they go, breaking all noise regulations with an abandon that F who regularly breaks noise abatement orders like they’re a layer of a mille feuille can only stare at in amazement and generally mocking everything that the Scots hold dear, (namely the Scots) they cause as much devastation as can be wreaked by a couple of whirlwinds in female form.

Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t bad kids. They aren’t perfect, but then they aren’t naughty or spoilt either. There isn’t a mean, vindictive, squalling bone in their bodies. They’re just exuberant. As far as I’m concerned, J & M should have a medal and a large annuity for life for accomplishing what seems to be the impossible these days – bringing up children who are free from all neuroses and psychoses. In short it should suffice to mention that being around them is being around the concept of what a child should be. And if I then go on to mention that A is 14 and R is 10 then you will see how unusual this is. By the time most children reach that age – they aren’t children any more; they’re bonsai versions of middle aged depressives.

As an aside here (which may seem a bit odd given the above paragraph in praise of my goddaughter and my notgoddaughter), I’d just like to ask if I’m the only person in the world who wonders exactly why Britain seems to have become so depressingly child centric. And why its first commandment seems to be “thou shalt not say no, to the fruit of your loins but will instead engage in a long and pointless discussion with it in tones of stress and near hysteria” It’s honestly not that I’m intolerant of children – it’s just that if you must take them out in public once they’re capable of independent movement – train them first. You’d do it if it were a puppy. I’m sick and tired of going to restaurants only to have my meal ruined either, by a parents too loud conversation with the waiter that outlines in graphic detail exactly what food groups the little so and so is allergic to and the effect that these foods have on their digestive system or by long and meaningless attempts on behalf of the parents to reason with the precocious darling they created over exactly what they want to eat. It doesn’t happen in France. The restaurants there are full of perfectly behaved children who are cosseted by parents, waiters and other diners alike but whose manners come straight out of a handbook on etiquette. Furthermore, what is it about parenthood that means once you’ve managed to reproduce (and its not that difficult – all it takes is a bottle of red wine and a memory lapse) that’s all you’re able to talk about for the rest of your life. Having once spent nearly two years working with someone who assumed that because she was engrossed in her child’s bowel movement I should be too, I feel that I’m entitled to speak out on behalf of the rest of us whose sense of humour may well be in the gutter but who’s intellect is still well above the contents of a potty.

Now as you may know, for the past few weeks I’ve been a bit unwell. I’m not going to go into any great and gory detail – the gist of it was that one night about three weeks ago now I started to feel a bit achy, put it down to flu and went to bed. Woke up three hours later unable to breathe without extreme agony, sat up all night (where I learnt that the most annoying thing in the world is to be awake all night in agony while your nearest and dearest – F and the real Hendrix Cat - sleep the sleep of the just beside you and that when faced with this the best action to take is some judicious pinching and prodding - on F – had I attempted to do this to the real HC then I would have lost a finger.) Got an emergency appointment at the doctors the next morning – got into the surgery – lungs clear and no cough but in great pain and apparently tachycardic with a pulse of 120 and so was told to go straight to hospital where in response to my frantic phone messages and being remarkable forgiving on account of the judicious prodding and pinching he’d had to endure the night before, an extremely worried looking F met me. They thought it might be a blood clot on my lung, but after a series of tests; including an X ray, removing most of my blood with a blunt needle (and how come doctors despite the years of training are unable to hit the vein first time but stab at you like they’re rehearsing the assassination scene in Julius Caesar, while nurses – despite the fact that they don’t have the years of training – can manage it first time and more gently to boot?) and several attempts on my patience (being called dear by a female doctor who was younger than me was one I nearly failed) which included being sat in a wheelchair in a corridor for 9 hours while clad only in a hospital gown which had no strings to tie it together at the back making getting out of the chair and walking past the rest of the patients who were also sitting in the corridor waiting to be seen) in order to get the to loo, an exercise in wall hugging (thank god I was wearing big knickers that day) anyway after all that, they decided at 8pm that evening that there was nothing wrong with me and that I could go home. This was after a bit of a hissy fit on my part when I demanded to be allowed to go home, because I figured that if I’d been sitting in a hospital corridor for 9 hours then despite the pain and the dizziness and the generally feeling like shit on a stick then there couldn’t be anything that much wrong with me and besides which I wanted a cigarette (one thing I did find out from the tests is that my blood oxygen levels are at 99% which means all these years of smoking have been for naught) Despite the fact that there was nothing clinically wrong with me I spent the next week unable to move from the daybed, too ill to move, read, eat or generally do anything apart from cry like a baby and generally be a right royal pain in the butt towards F whose patience never once ran out. Frankly, if I’d had to look after myself, I’d have smacked me in the face. With a blunt instrument.

But once the illness had worn off a bit and I could enjoy the fact that I was having some time away from a job that I’m taking obsessively seriously for no other reason than the fact that I’m pathetically grateful be paid for staying at home and playing with graphics programmes I began to be in a bit of a better mood. And then one day, like a bolt from the blue, a scene from the last visit of A and R came back to me…

We were walking down from Edinburgh castle and I was attempting to do my god- motherly duty by inspiring A with all the possible things she could do once she was old enough to venture out into the big wide world. With a wave of her hand she stopped me.

“When I grow up” she said decisively “I shall live in a big house in the country. I shall have 3 dogs and 2 horses and some children and lots of finches in an aviary”

“You’ll need a lot of money for that” I said to her “what are you going to do to make the money”

“I shall marry a vet” she said. “Because they are all rich and besides which it will be useful if the animals get sick because he will know how to treat them”

“And you will look after the animals and the house and the children” I said

“No” she replied “my husband will come home from work and he will do the cleaning and the shopping and look after the animals and the house and the children and he will cook dinner as well.”

“But A” I replied “what will you do?”

“I will be lovely” she said.

I can see her point. Out of the mouths of babes and infants…

…The best At Murder Are Those
Who Preach Against It
AND The Best At Hate Are Those
Who Preach LOVE
AND THE BEST AT WAR
FINALLY ARE THOSE WHO PREACH
PEACE

Charles Bukowski - The Genuis of The Crowd

Sometimes no matter how much we try to control ourselves, our emotions get the better of us. They flood our brain with scarlet lake and there is nothing - no justification, no rationalisation that will restore our equilibrium. There’s a part of me that hates this feeling - and a part that loves it. For two weeks now I’ve been in a terrible rage. It started at about quarter to nine every morning last week and intensified daily until, by last Saturday I was incandescent. Rationalisation, justification, controlled breathing, nothing worked. I tried so many ways to get this anger out until at last I picked up paints and paper and began to lash out colour. What came out instead was the following, scrawled across several sheets of A3. I’ve spent the past two weeks deliberating and debating about whether or not to post this. I wrote it in rage borne of frustration and hopelessness and desperation and sadness. I freely admit that it will annoy and upset a great many people. But if I’m not honest about what I feel and what I think then I am worthless. I claim no superiority, I claim the right to post this for one man who said nothing and endured and survived. I claim the right for the people who have had no reparation or remembrance, I claim the right based on the experiences that make me who and what I am because what that is, is coloured by the blood of those I come from and if I annoy people and upset people then so be it. But I hope and pray that I make you think.

Did you know that there was once (and still may be) a farmhouse in a far away land? It does exist, I’ve seen the photographs, a little faded, a little crumpled, captioned on the back in the letters of an alphabet I don’t understand. It was a pretty farmhouse, a neat farmhouse, the sort of farmhouse that figures largely in the beginnings of fairy tales. It had a crooked chimney and the gables were carved in wonderful swirls. It had woods on one side and fields on the other and a river not too far away. It was just a house. It wasn’t just a house. It was way more special, way more magical than that. It was a home. And, as anyone who has ever been without one knows - there is a world of difference between a house and a home.

The family who lived in this house weren’t that special. They had no rich relatives, no powerful connections, no magical powers, no special gifts whatsoever. Just a mother and father and three boys. There may have been a couple of girls too, I’m not so sure. What I know of this family I know from half-remembered remembrances. But the one thing I’m quite sure of is that they weren’t special in any way. They were just a family. A bit boring in these days of instant gratification, no fault divorce, pension plans, rising house prices, keeping up and running off with the Jones’s, serial monogamy, swinging, flinging, steps, half steps and oops I’ve missed a step call the CSA but they were happy.

So here we have it. The perfect start to a fairy tale. A house with a crooked chimney and swirly wooden gables painted a spotless white. A house with woods on one side and fields on the other and a river not too far away. A house with a poor but happy family where the father was firm but fair and a mother who sounds like the sort of mother who would win prizes, she cooked and cleaned and kept house and did all the things that would have her hanged by feminists but make for well balanced and happy children. We even have the perfect hero for our story. The middle son. It’s always the middle son. The eldest is always at work and the youngest too young to be a hero.

He was a normal boy - that’s to say he was wicked but with a good and loving heart. He was quite clever although he went to school begrudgingly. It was a seven mile round trip over the fields and in the winter he had to ski there but that wasn’t the reason he didn’t care for school although it did mean he won a prize for cross country skiing. It was just that he was a normal boy and like most boys he didn’t see the point of school when he could fill his pockets with food and take to the fields to do whatever it is that boys do when given enough room to have a childhood. One thing I know he learnt from his childhood was this. He could make flutes from green willow wands by stripping out the heartwood and boring holes in the bark. He could make rope swings too and imitate bird calls so perfectly that they would answer him back.

Did you know that in this magical cottage was a painted stove with a shelf above it? A large wide shelf just big enough for a small boy and his dog to curl up on. From there he could watch his mother baking in the kitchen below. The smell of the fresh baked bread would rise up with the heat until he could taste it without even eating

Did you know that this fairy tale house had a vegetable garden. Of course it did. Shops don’t feature largely in fairy tales. Did you think the three bears bought their oats from the local supermarket? Why do you think that Snow White bought her apple from the wicked stepmother? Had there been a Tesco’s nearby she wouldn’t have needed to rely on a pedlar would she? So this house, with the crooked chimney and the painted stove had a vegetable garden. And in this vegetable garden the cabbages had silver sand around them to stop the eels from eating them. Did you know that eels will leave a river to sliver and squirm their way through the wet grass to eat cabbages?

Sturgeon and pike lived in the river too. Big, dark dangerous fish. One night his father caught one and brought it home and it lay on the kitchen table, breathing its last before it was roasted for supper. Across the river was the church and the night before Easter his mother would ask him to row her across the river so she could spent the whole night in vigil before Christ rose. The church was lit by candles and her long hair, tight bound in its complicated patterns of plaits and knots glinted in the soft light.

Do you know that sometimes, when work was done they would sit at night and tell stories. That’s what people did before they had television. They told stories. The most terrifying were the tales of the Tsars who would hunt them down and shoot them from trees with guns. For fun. Did you know that the mother would look up at the boy where he lay on the shelf above the stove and tell him not to be frightened because these things didn’t happen any more, they were a free country now.

One day, for that is how all good fairy stories start, one day our boy went out to play. He was fourteen. It wasn’t a school day and he wasn’t avoiding his chores, he was at perfect liberty to go out and play. The sky was a brilliant blue and the grass in the fields so green it was as if mother nature herself had delivered an invitation to explore. So he took his dog and went into the fields, looking for adventures. They shot his dog in front of him and dragged him to the railway station.

He had the presence of mind to shout out to a neighbour as he passed and as soon as his mother heard what happened to him she ran, ran, ran as fast as she could after him. Her apron still on, still floury from baking. She waved him goodbye. She couldn’t do anything else because soldiers with guns stood between all the mothers and their children.

Do you know about the fourteen year old boy who was herded into a cattle truck and taken across Europe? It was a long journey. It was a cold journey. It was a hungry journey. There were hundreds of them on the train and they were crammed so tight into the trucks that there wasn’t room to sit down. He cried. Most fourteen year old boys would die rather than cry. Most fourteen year old boys have more than those two choices.

Do you know how it feels to be stripped of your clothes? to have your head shaved and to be deloused? Men, women and children all together. Standing naked in the cold. Intimately examined by a doctor. Separated into two groups. Dressed in striped suits, too thin for the cold weather. Did you know the delouser looked like green jelly?

Do you know about the fourteen year old boy who stole a turnip?. It was snowing that day and all you could see for miles around was the patchy white and black of frozen earth. Behind them was the railway line It was so cold and he was so hungry. Fourteen year old boys are always hungry - ask any parent. Especially when they’re only fed half a slice of bread in the morning and bowl of thin “don’t look too closely just eat it soup” in the evening. Especially when they spend the rest of the day shifting railway sleepers under the eye of armed guards who hit them when they don’t work hard enough. But sometimes the guards looked away and when they did he seized his chance. Slipping and sliding down the railway siding he got to the field and with icicle fingers scrabbled at the iron hard earth and uncovered a turnip. After another second he’d grabbed another. He hid them inside his shirt and slid his way back to the track. The guards saw him. They kicked him until the turnips inside his shirt fell out and then they kept on kicking. They left him by the track as the prisoners worked on and soon the snow covered his body.

Did you know how to play Russian Roulette- German style? There aren’t many rules. Hold a roll call every morning and shoot every tenth person in the line up. If you get bored, vary the number, or make them run round the compound and see if you can hit them. Continue playing until you run out of bullets.

Did you know the best way to pull out your own wisdom tooth when it becomes infected? You can try string and a door, but sometimes they’re in short supply. A nail and most of the night does it. The last thing you want to do is to go to the camp dentist. They extract your tooth with a bullet.

Did you know happens when you put copper filings inside an open wound? You saw at your skin with a file to make a cut and then sprinkle them inside. It makes an abscess and an abscess wins you a day off work. Only one day though, those who can’t work don’t eat. Did you know it leaves a blue mark on your skin for the rest of your life? Did you know that his grandchildren don’t know if granddad’s blue arm was the result of that or whether a teenager had the presence of mind to self tattoo over his numbers - just in case it happened again.

Do you know how it feels to be liberated? There are no more bullets but there are no warm blankets either. There is a bombed out city and the will to live whatever the cost. Do you know what it takes for a fourteen year old to survive 4 years in a concentration camp? Do you know what it takes for an eighteen year old to survive in a post war city?

Do you want to know how to sell meths as whiskey? It’s very easy. Burn some sugar on top of a piece of bread. When it starts to go brown and starts to melt, scrape it into the into the bottle It will look like whisky. It won’t smell or taste like whiskey so you better be able to sell the bottle and run like the wind as soon as the deals been struck.

Do you know the best way to stuff a cigarette with sawdust? A seasoned joint roller couldn’t do it better. Tease out the tobacco slowly. Be careful not break the skins. Slide the sawdust back inside. Show the goods quickly. Strike a deal. Scarper.

Do you know how it feels to be told that you can go to Canada or Australia or England? Do you know how it feels to choose England only to discover that you are not wanted there? That throughout your entire life you will be judged by people who have never gone through one tenth of what you went through? By people who will consider you as foreign until the day you die? By people who will belittle you because your accent is not the same as theirs?

Do you know how it feels to choose England because it was closer to home and then to discover that the borders are sealed and you can never go back? That the news of your parents death is telegraphed to you some twenty years later.

Do you know how to rebuild your life? To build a family when you have had none. To take on the language and customs of a foreign land - not through choice, but because you have no choice.

You don’t know and despite your protestations to the contrary you don’t care. You don’t care, because you walk past beggars in the street. After all, as I heard this week from a couple of warm well fed woman who think that buying a Big Issue qualifies them from beatification - beggars can make up to thirty thousand pounds a year and most of them hide their designer clothes in dustbins while they beg . You don’t care because you’ll take to the street to ban fox hunting but you wouldn’t march to have the homeless housed. You don’t care because you don’t approve of asylum seekers or if you do you don’t want them in your back yard. You don’t care because you cannot tolerate the concept of tolerance zones You don’t care, because genocide is happening now - this instant, in a hundred different places in the world and we’re doing fuck all to stop it. You don’t care because you’ll vilify and crucify those who you don’t agree with. You don’t care because you automatically assume that those who speak with an accent think with one and don’t tell me you don’t, I live with a Frenchman who has a better vocabulary in English than any other person I know and I see the patronising “better humour him” look in peoples eyes when they pretend to listen to him speak. You’ll put your hands in your pocket and give when suffering is blazed at you on the TV screen but you won’t search it out and offer succour. You don’t care because you haven’t been there. You don’t know and you don’t care and all the TV series and remembrance days aren’t going to make you or I anything other than selfish, self centred, “I’m all right Jack” people we are.

And I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before. A million times on the History Channel and now on Breakfast TV and BBC 2. But you haven’t heard these stories. No one will ever hear these stories. They are the stories of a man without a voice told to a child who can only half remember them now. Because by the time we were old enough to understand, he would not speak of them. Because he did not speak of them except with a laugh in his voice - stories of grandpa and the Germans. Except for once.

Do you want to know the best bit of this fairy tale? The bit that will stop you nodding and thinking that you’re hearing this from the horses mouth? Another true to life experience of the camps. Another made for TV special we can watch and then switch off. He wasn’t Jewish. That one fact, in the eyes of world, makes everything he went through meaningless. We do not know why he was taken, only that he was. He was not persecuted for his beliefs. There is no world wide day of mourning, no Schindlers list, no media frenzy to hear his story, no Dermot and Natasha to cue him in with hushed deference. There is no remembrance day for my grandfather, no reparation, no gifting of a homeland, no government subsidies, no world-wide ransom. As we have none for the Russians, the gypsies, the Catholics, the homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled. As we have none for all those throughout history who’s faces didn’t fit, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no race or religion that has the monopoly on suffering, on genocide, on persecution. There are more stories than those of Auschwitz. Yet we must remember that it is not a numbers game. Because the way we do it now is that the race or religion who had the most dead or the best media coverage are those that will be remembered. Right now we must remember that my grandfather did not exist, his comrades, the children shipped out with him are worth less than nothing because as they die and they are dying now, there are only the half remembered stories told by people like me. And when the grandchildren die - when I am dead and my brother is dead, he will not be remembered. There are millions of people who do not even have that. These are the people we should not forget.

Do you know how I remember my grandfathers voice? Half devoured by Alzheimers with the heavily accented Geordie English he spoke? grabbing my arm unable to remember that I was the child he made flutes from willow wands for. Words spilling out in a half teared flurry like snowflakes over a body. The only memory left to him by a disease that if there was a God should have taken away all memory.

“…and he said don’t look, don’t look outside the train. But I looked and the ground was moving… from all the bodies underneath, the ground was moving.”