Can’t find Toppo.
Call the kid.
This number is unobtainable.

The internet can be a wonderful thing, but sometimes it sends your brain into meltdown.

Type “Alzheimer” into Google, and once you’ve been told by the machine how to spell it, you get about thirty-four and a half million options.
About.
It’s too many for even the world’s most popular search engine to figure out the exact number.

So where do you start?
Should I even be looking at it?
Maybe Gran’s just getting older and needs a bit of help.

Reading this stuff is scary.

“The period of time between diagnosis and the person dying varies from three to 20 years”.

Three years?
And when I tell Mum about it, about the cat and the plates and the notes, she just goes off on one.

“Don’t talk to me about those damn plates, I’ve had her on the phone three times this week, accusing me of going into the house and taking her plates. As if I’d want them, I haven’t even been over there for nearly two years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have talked to her about them, maybe found them if they’re still around.”

“They sold them to pay for a cruise, years ago, when Dad was still alive.”

“Well it would have helped to know. I didn’t know what she was on about.”

“Who does?”

Mum’s upset, it’s not nice to be accused of stealing plates by your own mother, but I’m the one here, on the ground, and she’s just admitted not visiting for nearly two years.

I decide to go for the jugular,
“Why don’t you come over and check her out? You might notice more than me if you haven’t seen her for a while.”

“I can’t be popping over every five minutes, not with Patrick and the business and the dogs and the cats.”

It’s not meant as a criticism, but she takes it as one. I persevere,
“Surely you could manage a long weekend. Get Patrick to feed the cats and bring the dogs. You can stay with us.”

“I’ll talk to Patrick, see what he’s doing over the next month. And I can’t bring the dogs, they don’t like travelling. Got to go now. That’s Patrick back for lunch.”

“Where’s the Kit-e-Kat?”

What can I say that won’t end in an argument over a dead cat?

She puts the empty carrier bag down on the table, picks up a tea-towel from the back of a chair and starts wiping grime onto a mug stained brown from the tannin of years of cuppas.

She stops, squints at me over the top of her bifocals and sniffs.

It’s a sniff that says she’s waiting for an answer, and it’d better be a good one.
But then she changes tack.

“Your hair wants a brush. What you been doing?”

She always says that, even when I’ve just been to the hairdresser and had it blow-dried longer, straighter and sleeker than the entire female cast of Friends, so I should be used to it.
But I can’t help it. I still have to sneak a look at myself in the mirror, still propped up against the ancient Bush radio on top of the fridge.

I decide the cat issue is the one to tackle, as the hair is a recurring theme which can never be resolved.

“What do you want Kit-e-Kat for?” I ask, feigning innocence.

“What do you think I want it for? Toppo’s got to eat something. I’ve been feeding him cornflakes all week.”

She looks at me open-mouthed, shoves her glasses back up her nose and sniffs again.

She’s been sniffing like that for years and I’ve given up worrying about Allergic Rhinitis.

“Gran,” I try to sound like a kindly old doctor dishing out bad news, while quelling my irritation that even after death she can’t get Toppo’s gender right.

“Toppo’s not around any more. She died, don’t you remember? We took her to the vet to be put down a couple of years ago. It was for the best, she was old and very ill. Perhaps you’ve been feeding someone else’s cat?”

She sniffs again, more ferociously this time, then turns and points towards the dressing table-turned-sideboard that’s wedged in front of the larder.

“What’s that if it’s not a cat’s bowl?”

Burr, Bread , Shoog

Her shopping lists are always the same. There used to be Kit-e-Kat too, but not since the last cat died.

So I just got her the bread, butter and sugar, plus a packet of chocolate biscuits to keep me going until after work.

She insists on keeping her biscuits in the same tin as her fruit cake, so the cake makes the biscuits go soft.
I’ve told her to use two different tins, and I’ve even shown her an article about how to keep biscuits fresh, but she won’t listen.  

She always said to me when I was a child,

“you’ll learn the hard way”

and I reckon it’s my turn to start saying that to her now.
But she’d have an answer, and that would annoy me even more, so I generally take my own biscuits if I’m likely to be there for a cup of tea.

When she opens the front door she stares at me, glares at the carrier bag, sniffs, pushes her bifocals up to the top of her nose and says,

“What’s wrong with the Co-op then?”

She takes the shopping, turns her back on me and stomps inside, leaving me on the doorstep wishing I had a lovely little old gran with a grey bun who sits on the settee quietly knitting and being grateful for all the help she gets from her family.

I’m still standing there musing on the family we’re dealt, when I see her in the murky hallway.
She blocks off the light from the kitchen window behind her like a silhouette of Fungus the Bogeyman.

“Come in if you’re coming,” she says, “kettle’s on.”

“Got a bus pass, don’t use it. Not like old Jane Barry next door. Never goes anywhere. I told her, you should take the grandkids to Guernsey for the day. But no. Why should I, she says. Too tight to spend Christmas, these locals.”

When my gran gets into monologue mode, she’s hell on legs.

What I normally do is nod at her, while quietly thinking my own thoughts. I didn’t have time for that though, I had to get to Gorey to interview a man who collects Marilyn Monroe’s dresses and Jesse James’ guns.

He sounded mad on paper, but mad often makes good material, and if I could keep him comprehensible I may be able to sell it to a glossy mag.

Maybe, if he’s a really good mad, I could even sell it to a national.

So I had to get out quickly, without upsetting her.

To outsiders she seems a tough old bird, but my gran can take offence really easily. I remember times when she wouldn’t speak to me for days if I didn’t mention her new hair cut, or her new shoes, or even her new apron, for Christ’s sake.

All I’d get was fuming silence through dinner, tea, and then the next day’s breakfast as well.
It was usually one of the animals who’d loosen her up, and when I heard her chatting away to one of the cats, I’d know forgiveness was on its way, or if not forgiveness, at least forgetfulness.

But there are no animals left, no real ones anyway. 

“…and old Ma Roberts, she’s had another operation. Gawd, she’s had so much taken out of her she must be hollow by now…”

It looked like Ga was in for a long one, so I was just going to have to do it the hard way.

“Sorry, got to go.”

I was backing out of the kitchen as I spoke, holding onto the Co-op bag containing my secret haul of notes.

She stopped, looked at me and then at the bag.

“You been shopping?”

“Yes, on my way here. Bye then, see you tomorrow or
Wednesday, not sure when I’ll have time yet.”

“Please yourself.”

And she pretended not to care as she turned her back on me and wiped imaginary crumbs from the plastic table cloth.

Wednesday today
The time, sponsored by Accurist, is ten twenty-six and thirty seconds
Toppo is dead

I expected them to be functional, like her shopping lists; Burr, Shoog, Kit-e-kat; but these were different.

They weren’t so much aides memoires as tableaux vivants, but that’s enough French, it’s my gran we’re talking about, the woman who believes wogs start at Calais and charity begins at home.

She has no truck with speaking French, but she has a peculiar way of spelling which does owe something to the language of Proust and Napoleon.

Out of the two she’d probably have more sympathy with Napoleon. She’s always thought Madeleine cakes were over rated.

Spelling is where it stops for her though. The frogs are just over the water, but she manages to keep them at bay by keeping a pot of perpetually stewing tea on the go. 

But she does like to say burr instead of butter, and she likes her day trips to the land of four course lunches.

A woman of many parts, you might say. Or if you were feeling uncharitable you might say she’s a contrary old bat.

Either way, she’s my Gran and she’s been writing the strangest notes and leaving them all over the house.

The time, sponsored by Accurist
is nine thirty-seven
and ten seconds

“What you doing in there?”

She’s managed to stomp into the kitchen without me noticing. She’s glaring at the drawer, half open and half empty.

“Looking for the plates,” I reply, closing my hand around the plastic bag full of notes. “No joy I’m afraid. Did you find any?”

She pushes past me and slams the drawer shut, then straightens the cloth.

She tilts her head back so she can look at me through the half moons of her bi-focals, then she sniffs, blaming me for the disarray of her kitchen table.

“Plates? I’ve got plenty of plates. I don’t know what you want to go looking for them for. You hungry? I’ve got some chicken.”

She stomps across the kitchen to the oven, bends down and tugs open the door.

There, inside, is a wrinkled up chicken, probably left over from Sunday dinner.

“No thanks, I only dropped in for a few minutes. Do you need anything? I could pop in after work if you do.”

She looks at me as if I’ve suggested a quick swim before breakfast.

“I’ve already been shopping,” she shoves the oven door shut with her knee, turns round to face me, leans back against the cooker and folds her arms across her bolster pillow breasts.

“Walked to the Co-op. Got a bus pass, don’t use it. Not like old Jane Barry next door. Never goes anywhere. I told her, you should take the grandkids out for the day. But no. Why should I, she says.
Too tight to spend Christmas, these locals.”

I know we’re in for a long one, so I sit down at the table and close my eyes.

I was looking for the plates, and only just remembered there was a drawer, hidden under the overhanging plastic table cloth.

I had to tug on one side of it while simultaneously shoving the other side up into the underside of the table to get the damn thing to judder open.

Inside was a mess, just like the kitchen. Half eaten sweets, used plasters and god knows how many broken biros.

I yanked the drawer all the way open and fetched a plastic bag to jettison all the crud that was in there.

As I delved in past the plasters and biros, I could see torn up scraps of paper scrunched up in little piles, hundreds of them, all folded up small and rolled into balls.

I started chucking them into the plastic bag with all the sticky bits of leftover lemon sherbets.

I don’t know what it was that made me read one, I suppose it was just nosiness.
I picked one out at random and read it.

Tuesday today
The time, sponsored by Accurist, is ten twenty-six and thirty seconds
Turn off stove
Take handbag

What’s all that about?

This time she wanted me to look for her plates as well.
Those damn plates.
She started going on about them a few months ago, and I can’t even remember which ones she means.

“The ones with the willow pattern, Mum’s ones,” she keeps saying.

Well I can’t find them.

There are plenty on the little plate rack that goes all round the top of the sitting room wall where most people have a picture rail, but they, apparently, are not The Plates.

For a start it isn’t fitted, and all the bits of furniture are each heading off into their own peculiar version of Dickensian hell.

The dresser is turning that orangey colour that cheap pine goes when it’s been obliterated by layers of varnish; the sink stinks because it’s clogged up with potato peelings and tea bags; the old dressing table she uses as a cupboard has lost a leg and is tilting precariously on a pile of old Watchtower magazines, and then there are the pants.

She won’t buy a washing machine or a tumble dryer, so she hand washes everything and hangs it out on the line.

If it’s raining she gets out the old clothes horse and drapes everything on that.
Except for her woolly pants.
She has a special place for them.

She hangs them over the grill pan and toasts them until they’re concrete sculptures, stiff with all the encrusted soap that she doesn’t rinse out properly.

The whole room is a mess.

And then there are the notes.