Tea is my typewriter

I phoned Cousin Alec last night to ask why he hadn’t come up to see me. He told me that his Cathy had been up last week and so she’d told me all his news, but really? I mean, Cathy’s a nice enough lassie, and she brought thon big box of biscuits with her, nice ones from the new Sainsbury’s at the market cross, but she’s taken up with a new man – Gerard. Gerard McCafferty. I ask you. Where did she go and meet him? Was she hanging about outside the chapel? Up the Saint Thomas of Acquinas with her pals before the dancing? Alec said, hold on Ina, he’s a nice lad, it’s not like it was in our day, and his hair’s only a wee bit ginger. Well. We’ll see.

And then Alec asks me about my medicine and what the doctor’s given me for my chest, so I told him, I don’t know, I just take the pills the home helps leave out. They get them from the chemist and I take them and that’s all there is to it. None of them do any good. And he says, you’re still alive, Ina, they’re doing you no end of good! And I said, really, Alec? No end of good to still be alive, sitting up here on my own, day in day out? Waiting in for visitors that never come? 

So then Alec says, how about we go for a wee run in the car next week? He says we could go doon the watter, Saltcoats or maybe Largs, like when we were wee. I laughed. I laughed right at him. Old fool probably shouldn’t even still be driving at his age. How could we do that? I said, with your bladder? It’s never been the same since that prostate operation. And the roads are so busy. And the home helps come every day, what if they came in when I wasn’t here? They’d be away with my bank book and emptying the jewellery out my dresser drawers. 

And anyway, I said, the watter’s not like it was when we were wee, Alec. That was 80 year ago. It’s all changed, I was on the phone to Sadie the other week and she was telling me. The ice cream shops are all different, even the chippys are all different. What’s the word she said? Artisan. Artisan ice cream, artisan chips. Sadie said, Ina, I ask you, what’s artisan about no peeling a tatty? Chips with skins on!  And rosemary flavoured ice cream? It makes me sick to think about it. Alec said “you can still get vanilla, Ina,”, but when we used to go doon the watter it wisnae vanilla, it was just ice cream. No, no. No trip to the seaside thank you, it’s not what it used to be.

We had a chat about the times we used to go down the social club and have a drink on a Tuesday night. Just a wee whisky, not like these ones today getting filthy drunk any night of the week. We just went for a blether and a laugh and a wee bit of entertainment. That was a rare wee club, it would fairly get busy at the weekend, they’d have bands and dancing. But there just wisnae the members to keep it going any more. Folk kept dying. At the end, Tony behind the bar said he was taking more money from the receptions after folks’ funerals than he was from the music nights. There were some rare receptions there, right enough. It shut down after the Hogmanay party in 2016. That was some swan song, I tell you. So many wheelchairs and zimmer frames you’ve never seen. It was a magic night. Now it’s a pub – what do you call the beer? Art beer? Hobby beer? Craft. Aye that’s it, it’s a craft beer pub. 

And then Alec says there’s someone ringing at his door and he’s got to go. So I thought to myself, it’s Tuesday night, I know that Lizzie’ll be able to answer the phone on a Tuesday night. That care home she’s in, they have a wee social room with the phone in it, and she’s always in the social room on a Tuesday for the wee concert party, they come round on Tuesdays and do a turn. So I had a nice wee chat with Lizzie. She forgets a lot but she seems happy enough in herself. 

Monday night I know Tommy’s in so I’ll give him a ring. Tonight I’ll give Sadie a wee call and find out how she got on at the hospital last week. She’s in lovely sheltered housing, she can answer her own phone, when she can hear it. Her family are in and out of that wee house, she says she never gets a moment’s peace. That must be nice, getting lots of visitors.

Do you know who came to visit me the day before yesterday? Susie. She is looking just beautiful. That’s her away to the uni in September. Edinburgh. Mm. I told her, watch and not go all East Coast on us, Susie, you know they’re not friendly there. They’ve got a castle and they think it makes them posh. 

And she said, I’ve got a present for you, Auntie Ina. Beautiful, it was, all wrapped up in lovely pink tissue paper and tied with a lovely bow. Look, there it is on the sideboard, didn’t she make it look lovely? It’s a lovely parcel. 

She says, it’s a new address book, Auntie. I know you like to keep a nice note of all your numbers so you can phone us all the time, and I thought your one was looking a bit old. I was going to get you a mobile phone with all the numbers programmed in, but I thought you’d like this better. It’s nice and big so you can see the numbers without your glasses. And I’m going to help you put all the phone numbers in it today. I’ll copy them all out and put them in the right pages in my best handwriting.

I said, that’s awfy thoughtful of you Susie. You’re such a good girl and you’re so clever. I said thank you, and I told her to go and get us a cup of tea and there’s a box of nice biscuits in the cupboard. Susie makes a good strong cup of tea, so she does, not like those home helps who can barely wave the bag over the cup of hot water. Susie knows how to make a cup of tea. She came back in and she said “aren’t you going to open it, Auntie?” 

The thing about angina is that it can come on awfy sudden. One minute I’m fine and looking forward to the tea, and then I can hardly breathe. It’s awful, it really is. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth all the pills and prescriptions, just to sit up here and wait for someone to visit or phone me. Maybe they’d all be better off without me. 

Susie got me my spray and my tablets, and she tucked me under a blanket, and while we were waiting for the angina to pass, she showed me her mobile phone. She says it’s a smart phone. She keeps all her pals’ numbers in her phone. She doesn’t even have an address book. I asked her, how do you choose who to phone, without being able to flick through it and pick someone? She laughed and said she always knows who she wants to talk to, and besides, she usually sends texts instead of chatting. 

She’d had this chap, they’d had a few nights out and she decided he wasn’t for her, so do you know what she did? She blocked him. He can’t phone her any more. Even if he tries, she’ll not hear it ring because she’s blocked him. And she just deleted him from her phone, it’s like he never even existed. “Auntie, he’s dead to me”, she said. 

I kept thinking about that. How can she pretend someone never existed? Just clicking your fingers and they’re gone? That’s not real, is it? No thank you, very much. She’s a clever girl and her phone might be smart, but I can’t understand why anyone would want to do that.

I’ve had this book forty years, since I moved up here. Some nights I’ll flick through  the pages like this and I can think, look at all the people I’ve known. All the blethers and all the laughs and days out. All those people come and gone. This address book keeps my memories. 

If I’ve ever had somebody’s number, it’s in this book. Even if they moved house, I’ll update it. There’s so many folks have moved, of course, like Lizzie in her care home and Sadie in the sheltered housing. They’re both under ‘Q’ now because I’d run out of space. The Qs and the XYZs are nearly full, it’s not natural, is it? But they stay in the book. Even the folks that are gone. They’re still there in my address book. I just put a wee ‘P’ for ‘passed on’  beside them. I can’t talk to them but I can still remember them. It’s like they’re not really gone. I don’t think Susie would understand that. She’s a clever girl, but I think she’d only want to write out the names and numbers of people I could phone. She’s only 18. She doesn’t know yet. 

I’m looking at Susie’s lovely parcel. Maybe I’ll give it to the home help when she comes. Maybe it’ll keep her hands out my dresser drawers.