Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell by Alison Whitelock Read Free Book Online Page A

on to me and it doesn’t matter where I go, I’ll always find a bargain—like that time I found Cartier shoes at St Vincent de Paul for a few dollars, right next to a stunning Victorian damask bedspread they’d wanted five dollars for, but I knocked them down to three ’cause I have to get a bargain and there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s in my genes.
    The other trait I’ve inherited from Nanny is wearing a beanie that closely resembles a tea-cosy. Last time Mum came to visit me in Sydney, I wore my beanie to go shopping with her and she told me I looked daft. She’s ­convinced I only wear it for a laugh. But the real reason is it reminds me of Nanny while it keeps me warm and it ­comforts me when I feel down.
    Once when I was in the lane with Nanny I saw this drunk man begging and it was wet and cold and his trousers were in tatters and his shoes had no soles. He’d managed to beg enough to get himself some booze; I could see his wee quarter bottle of Cutty Sark sticking out of his back pocket. Nanny passed him by as he stood there in the wet and as she did she pulled out a couple of coins from the pocket of her winter coat and placed them discreetly in his outstretched hand. Jessie saw what Nanny did and called out to her from the other side of the lane, ‘Haw, Nellie, he’ll only buy drink wi’ it!’ And Nanny walked across to Jessie and leant across her table full of cardigans and jumpers, four for a pound, and whispered discreetly, ‘I know he’ll only buy booze wi’ it, Jessie, but you tell me, what else does he have in his life?’
    And Jessie didn’t know what to say and so she shuffled from foot to foot and asked Nanny if she was interested in any of the nearly new bra and brief sets she’d just got in at two pound the set.
    â€˜Thanks, Jessie, but I’m not in the market for bras and briefs today. I’m looking out for a few jars of catering-size pickled gherkins for Maria the art teacher.’
    â€˜Try Whistling Tommy in the arcade, I think he just got a job lot in from that big hotel down there at the quay,’ Jessie said. Nanny thanked her and made her way to Whistling Tommy and that’s how it worked down the lane.
    Nanny was married to Grampa and Grampa did everything Nanny told him. He even went to the chapel on a Sunday for the two of them and sometimes when me and Izzy and Andrew went to visit them on a Saturday night, Nanny would say to Grampa, ‘Right, Bampsy!’—she always called him Bampsy—‘Get the potato pancakes on!’ And so Grampa had to get into the kitchen and start peeling and grating potatoes and he had to follow the recipe Nanny’s mum had handed down to her. Nanny’s mum came from Lithuania where they make potato pancakes all day long, only they don’t call them potato pancakes but they call them blinis, and what kind of a name is that?
    Grampa’s parents were Lithuanian too, and his dad used to ride wild horses bareback on the prairies of Lithuania, just like in the Wild West movies you get on the telly sometimes on a Saturday afternoon. So Grampa grew up with a love of horses and ponies, but his da wouldn’t let him ride them bareback on any prairies and was it any wonder that when he was still a wee boy he ran away from home and joined a travelling circus where he rode white horses bareback around the circus ring and children who came to the Saturday matinees screamed with excitement and delight?
    One day a man came to the town where Grampa’s circus was playing to make the first radio broadcast ever made from that little town. The broadcast would be made from the local swimming baths, ’cause that was the only building big enough to house the number of people who had shown up to see what was going on. The man in charge said he needed someone to jump into the swimming pool at the start of the broadcast so people for miles around