Grandparents - an upstanding example of once removed parenting ...
My mum and dad used to go out to the pub every Saturday night when I was about seven or so. This carried on for some years well into my teens (when i was fourteen or so they took me with them. I always looked older than I was and they didn't seem bothered by taking a teenage girl into pubs.) My mum would have never allowed anyone outside the family to talk to me, let alone baby sit, so my grandparents ended up with the job.

Sometimes they would come over to our house, where they would watch Tales of the Unexpected (which scared the bejeesus out of me) or Hammer horror films (even scarier when you are seven, well, they were for me anyway as i would often come downstairs for a glass of water when still half asleep, to hear shrieking or maniacal laughter from the front room and glimpse blood and weird happening on the tv screen). Then my grandad would go through my parents' bureau where all their paperwork was kept. When I innocently mentioned this to my mum, she went mental. My Nan would read me a bed time story at some point and invariably fall asleep before I did.
Sometimes I would go over to my nanna's flat and she would make us cheese on toast on their gas fire. We'd hold it in front of the stinky gassy council flat fume emitter on long forks. The toast got pretty burned to a crisp and the cheese was some sort of chemically coloured red orange stuff more akin to molten plastic than cheese, but I loved it !
Then my grandad would either put on his "records" (he was a huge Shirley Bassey fan) or give me one of his books to read. These were horror stories about swarms of man eating insects or chemical spills in small American towns that turned the inhabitants into zombies. Brilliant reading for a seven year old...
Good times !
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 15:02, 2 replies)

Cool sounding grandparents.
Oddly enough, all of my Grandads books were of the macabre variety. I wonder if it had anything to do with living through/serving in a war?
( Evil Bastardo, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 16:36, closed)

i remember cheese on toast like that
fluorescent orange, mmmm tatsy!
(evilneb nothing to see here, move along.., Sun 31 Oct 2010, 21:27, closed)