Not One For Change, My Granny.

My maternal granny was definitely from another era. She was born in 1898 in Belfast. She was a McFadden who married an Armstrong and he worked in Belfast Shipyard from his early teens until his retirement. Her sight was taken from her by late- life diabetes and she died with an unwavering faith in God and an unbelievable distrust of man and the generation then growing up around her. She was constantly bemoaning the state of affairs in the country and was outspoken about changes taking shape all around her. The invention of TV made her delirious with ridicule and thought it a waste of electricity and she never owned one, though when visiting a neighbour who did own one she, her attention would increasingly be drawn to the screen, leaving her friend to interject to keep any conversation alive. When it came to the kitchen she was unadventurous in her cooking and stuck to the same weekly menu for decades. Tea leaves where bought by the pound weight and shovelled into a boiling metal kettle to make a brown/black witches’ brew that would keep an army of millions awake and alert through the longest night. Then one day she was introduced to the humble tea bag. She was at once indignant, mortified and curious but relented and admitted the farfetched concept into her kitchen. Eyebrows were raised by doubting family and friends but she wasn’t going to let teabags get the better of her. Then one day a neighbour paid her a visit and caught granny cutting the corners of the guilty teabags and emptying the contents into her old tea box on the counter. “Friggin’ nuisance these things”, she was reported as saying.