This little text exchange about “four generations” will hopefully help you see why I want my mum on that mountain with me. She’s funny, practical and just the right amount of slightly loopy!
To give you some context, my fabulous Grandma – Margaret McArthur Miller – born in 1913, was a little Scottish lady who wrote my mum a list of foods my dad – her only child – didn’t like when they got married. She once painted tiny roses over the walls of an entire room when she couldn’t get hold of wallpaper, and she whipped up a trendy, plunging evening dress for my mum’s sister when she couldn’t afford a new frock for a ball in the 1960s. A talented, resourceful, kind woman she took mum (who lost her own mother when she was 12) to her heart and considered her a daughter.
When I went to stay with Grandma & Grandpa as a student, I took my boyfriend with me and we were shown into the spare room with the candlewick bedspread on its double bed. Grandma brought in cups of tea in the morning and, when we were alone for a moment, said how much she liked his “lovely long hair”!
She watched sport, loved dogs, helped her neighbours, and lived until she was 99. Despite the below all sounding a bit mad for a little old lady who lived in the same council house in Rutherglen for most of her life, I’m pretty confident she would have had a good giggle at the below, and raised a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream to our plans!
