My Quirky Nanna

I think my Nanna is going a little senile. She’s about to turn 80, and although she is surprisingly healthy and sane for her age most of the time, sometimes her behaviour defies explanation.


Take for example this week’s greeting card incident. My niece is turning five next week, and this year she’ll be spending her birthday in England with my sister-in-law’s side of the family. Because she won’t be around on the day, my Nanna did the good and proper Nanna thing and sent over a birthday card for her. It was a nice little card with a picture of snow white and the seven dwarves. In bed. Together.

You’d think that would be the tip off for her that it wasn’t exactly a kids card, but no - somehow she missed the writing across the bottom of the card that said “snow white still hadn't worked out how to tell them she was looking for someone a little taller...”


Nanna is full of little gems like that one. Her favourite trick is to use her mobile phone to call you and then forgetting to hang up, so that after leaving you a message on your answering machine, you can hear her complaining about your machine message or the fact that you never answer your phone.


Once, she bought me a ‘romance novel’ for Christmas. Now I’m not much of a romance novel fan, but when I’m short of reading material I’ll read just about anything I can get my hands on, so I thought I would give it a go. It turns out that it wasn’t so much a romance novel as an erotic novel. There were things in there that would make a porn star blush! I can only hope to hell that she didn’t actually read the book before she gave it me!


That’s just a small taste of the wonderful weirdness that is my Nanna. She’s my last living grandparent, and I’m happy that she’s still around to share her quirkiness with us.

Seniors Menu

Last week I had dinner at the East Malvern RSL and it was oddly reminiscent of dinners at my Nanna's house when I was young. The bistro was small and cosy, everything smelt like roast vegetables and gravy and the room was about 2 degrees warmer than was really necessary - just like my Nanna's house always is. I couldn't shake the feeling that my Nanna was going to walk in with a roast leg of lamb on a large platter and start dishing up enormous plates of food.

The entire menu read a little like a Seniors menu would, with items like 'Lambs fry & bacon' and 'roast of the day' - although oddly enough, there was actually a seniors menu as well. I've never been anywhere before where Lambs Fry made it onto the regular menu instead of the seniors menu.

The meals were very good and they did actually turn out be like home cooking. To be honest the food was probably better than it ever was at Nanna's place. The reason for this is not because she is a bad cook - she's not at all. No, the reason is because as my grandfather got older, it became harder for him to taste things and in order to stem the flow of complaints from him, Nanna would add large quantities of miscellaneous seasoning to her recipes to 'bring out the flavour'. It never stopped the complaints, of course, but it did make for some interesting tasting food. It was never enough seasoning for my Grandad, and he used to put all sorts of extra stuff in his food to give it more flavour.

During one very memorable meal, he complained loudly that the Chicken soup had no flavour, so he added salt, then pepper - but still no flavour. He added Worcestershire sauce - still no flavour. He added tomato sauce - still no flavour. He then proceeded to add a large scoop of Vegemite. At this point the chicken soup was a strange brownish black colour, and he had run short of strange things to add in order to increase the flavour. He had to content himself with putting his toasted sandwich into his soap and eating it all in one big sloppy, black, soupy mess. I guess the theory was that if you put enough kinds of food into one mouthful, you'll eventually be able to taste it, no matter how dull your sense of taste has become. I think i'll give it a go with tomorrows dinner. It could be interesting...