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

could hear the splash through their radios in the comfort of their own homes. When the man asked for a volunteer Grampa stuck up his hand and the man said, ‘Round of applause please for our volunteer!’
    The crowd went mad as Grampa ran back to his circus caravan and put on his stripy swimming trunks then raced back to the pool and waited for his cue to jump. When it came Grampa took a run and a jump and he splashed into the water and half the pool emptied out, near enough soaking the man who was holding the microphone. The crowd went wild. When Grampa came back up to the surface of the water everyone was cheering and clapping for the man in the stripy swimming trunks who’d just made history in their little town. Grampa stood dripping at the side of the pool and his chest swelled with pride.
    When Nanny and Grampa got married they had two sons, Chick and Bruce, as well as Mum, and when all three were grown up Bruce bought himself a wee car and that summer he drove Nanny and Grampa all the way from Scotland to Europe for a holiday and they toured all over and slept in a tent at bedtime. Grampa took his cine-camera and made movies of Nanny in the bulb fields in Amsterdam, at the Palace of Versailles, and at The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. When they got back to Scotland, me, Izzy and Andrew watched the movie with Mum on Grampa’s home projector screen and when we got to the bit with Nanny at The Little Mermaid, Mum started singing, ‘ Wonderful, wonderful, Co-pen-ha-gen! ’ and we all looked at Mum and then at each other and all of us thought she was mad. Years later Bruce had the movies put on a videotape to preserve the memories and I still have my copy of that video. It’s more precious to me than anything else I own and I watch it in my quiet moments to see Nanny at the Palace of Versailles, waving at the camera like she’s waving at me, and sometimes I wave back though I know it’s daft, but I loved her so much you see.

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Uncle Chick and his flaking skin
    Nanny and Grampa’s son Chick had bad asthma and eczema too. And even when they were grown-up men, Chick and Bruce still lived at home with Nanny and Grampa. Chick used to work in the projection booth at The Roxy Cinema on the Glasgow Road and it was his job to make sure the films ran on time and there were no jumpy bits when he changed a reel. Mum said Chick had changed the reel that night my da took her to The Roxy to see Psycho on their first date.
    We stayed at Nanny and Grampa’s one Saturday night ’cause my da had taken Mum out for a fish supper and an advocaat and lemonade at The Welcome Inn at Ferniegair. Nanny had spoiled us with bags of sweeties from Lennox’s, the sweetie shop at Bridgeton Cross, and later in the night she said the ice-cream van would be coming around too. I strained my ears to see if I could hear the chimes and as I strained I thought about what ice-cream I was going to have then remembered one night when Bruce had just got back from the Swiss Alps and he went to the ice-cream van and got us an ice-cream cone with a chocolate Flake stuck in it. Bruce said that was called a ‘99’ and he said he’d seen 99s in the ice-cream vans in the Swiss Alps. When we tasted them that night they tasted that good we wished Bruce would go away to the Swiss Alps more often. Next time Bruce was getting ready to leave for the Alps I asked him to bring me back a pair of lederhosen just like the ones I’d seen the family Von Trapp wear in The Sound of Music . And sure enough, when Bruce got to the Alps he searched and searched in all the shops but there were no lederhosen to be found. So he sent me a postcard and on it he wrote: Kein Lederhosen hier . I didn’t know what that meant but when he came back without the lederhosen, I knew what he had been trying to say.
    Anyway that Sunday morning after we stayed at Nanny’s me, Izzy and Andrew got ourselves out of bed and put on our