Old Nan Constant

My maternal grandmother at times used language that was colourful and profane enough to make comedienne Catherine Tate’s Nan Turner look like a raw beginner. Even as a small child I was nervously aware of the fact that she seemed to differ from the more mundane grandmothers in other families who made rock cakes and knitted cardigans. For one thing she was totally illiterate which was beginning to be something of a novelty in itself in the totally modern nineteen fifties. For another, she was not inclined to display much grandmotherly affection and neither did she hand out treats. Possibly she had just too many grandchildren, and too few resources to start on that latter slippery slope. I cannot recall her ever giving me either a hug, a kiss or a toffee. She was a remarkably hard woman. Her own ancestry was Irish but she had been born in a tenement building just off Cambridge Heath Road in Bethnal Green. Hers was a home in a multiple housing block already falling into overcrowded disrepair. The block has in recent years been restored lovingly courtesy of the local preservation society but when she lived there it was a shabby and squalid environment where it was of prime importance to develop an early ability to live by your wits. Her accent remained all her life that of a late Victorian cockney, a variant that has long disappeared and been replaced with a new and less harsh hybrid. In recent years I have been astonished when listening to old Music Hall recordings featuring Gus Ellen to hear in his speech, long ago echoes of my grandmother. Hers were the speech patterns that Hollywood tried so hard to mimic in block buster movies of the nineteen fifties and sixties - and generally failed to do so! At some stage in her early childhood, her nothing if not mobile family, transferred themselves to various parts of Kent to work the fields and orchards and consequently she absorbed a great deal of Kentish dialect which pervaded her speech until the day she died. She was often `ratty’ when she was displeased or angry, and sometimes she was `raw’ as well. She always `reckoned’ when stating a personal opinion – such as: `I reckon it’s gonna rain today’. Walking local fields and lanes she never glimpsed foxes but sometimes saw `Reynolds’. She invariably surveyed the remains of a Sunday roast meal and referred to it as `the ruins’. If she prepared a meal quickly she `rustled it up’. Cheeky grand-children were said to be `giving sauce, or old lip’. When we were very hard up after the death of my father she observed that we were `scratching along’. She referred to her overweight neighbor as a `slummuck’ and then went further and added that she was `a slummucky mare’. Suspicious of those who gave out compliments or indulged in flattery, she claimed they were `smarmy’. If shoes needed repair she said they needed `snobbing’. All this daily use of local dialect was passed on to her many children and understood by grandchildren and even some great grand children. In addition to the dialect we have discussed recently she also used language that even at the time made me acutely uncomfortable because in the particular little corner of Northfleet where I was born and grew up, no other grandmothers spoke in quite the same way. If any of her offspring or their spouses offended her, her wrath knew no bounds and they were accused in their absence, but never in their presence, of `…being so bleeding tight that they wouldn’t give their shit to the crows….’ Or perhaps a daughter might be accused of being, ` ….. a tight doxey who wouldn’t share the drippings of `er nose….’ Men were often `….. fart catchers…’ At times she advised her daughters that their husbands were in need of `a kick up the jacksie’ and the women themselves were silly mares who should be `kicked up the quim or quimpy’. If I did not leap to do her bidding immediately she would call me `a bleedin’ cow’s melt’. She blanched at the use of words like fuck, never used cunt but often advised others to stick uncalled for advice `up their twat’ and certainly `twat’, a word used liberally these days appears to have changed substantially in meaning. I rapidly gained a keen understanding of her most extreme vulgarity, internalized it whilst deciding to avoid use of it myself. Her most profane expressions are still capable of shocking me all these years later!