Into Bed With An Almond Magnum

The Nana fed me hot dog and ketchup sandwiches for lunch, popcorn and milk for breakfast and secreted sugar into the cups of coffee she made me while I was still at primary school.

Despite being a busy teacher, she began volunteering at a Save the Children Fund shop with my granddad when she turned 40. She continued to do so until ill health finally forced her to hang up her tabard at 88.

If you walked into her living room during those years of service, you would think she was running an underground laundrette. She was in charge of the shop’s children’s clothing section and would take home every item donated to be meticulously washed and ironed. “Even those with little should be able to enjoy picking their clothes”, she would tell me.

In her later years, after a long Saturday morning at “The Shop”, she would come home, kick off her shoes, and get into bed with an almond Magnum before curling up for a well-deserved nap.

She took pleasure in the simple things: frothy coffee (before the cappuccino craze took hold), ‘Downtown’ Abbey, and pottering in her lovingly tended garden.

Every Christmas we would go to a local upmarket garden centre to look for “ideas”. We’d never buy anything; instead, we’d spend hours pouring over the lavish decorations, proclaiming them gaudy and “much too dear”. We might stop for a pot of tea and a cake, but more often we’d both express disdain at the inflated prices and retreat home for a cup of tea and a choccy bickie.

She would come round for Sunday tea most weekends, which consisted of a roast and some sort of comforting pud cooked by my mum. We’d watch The Antiques Roadshow and Call the Midwife and then I’d walk her to her car, which she continued to drive into her 90s.

I relished those brief walks, arm in arm, sharing plans for the week ahead, shivering on frosty winter nights. In my late teens I was always desperately aware of her mortality as I closed her car door and waved goodbye. I was always nervous that it might be our last.

During my university years, that same sense of unease came over me every time I left her and headed back to Sheffield. I think she knew. With lumps in our throats, we’d both avoid the elephant in the room, have a lingering hug, and I’d lock the door on my way out.

I’m not sure I have ever loved anyone in the way I do the Nana. The grief I feel is complex, but I try to remember her simply. Piles of carefully pressed babygrows; treacle toffees in a bowl on the sideboard; and almond Magnums, curled up in bed.