The day my grandma fell out of the hay loft with a basket of eggs, something more than her backside was hurt, for, running from the yard, my father’s first question was, “Oh, dear. You haven’t broken any of the eggs, have you?” I’ve never found out what my grandma’s reply was but I think this reflects badly on the Fletcher ‘y’ chromosome and feel I should point out that this wasn’t the only occasion on which Grandma, built like a medium-sized barrel, fell to earth.

In fact, the first time she ever set foot on “Gladderbrook” she had a tumble. It must have been the summer of 1951 when Mom and Gran joined my father and grandfather for an inspection of this run down and improbable purchase. They didn’t realise it but I think it was already a done deal, I mean I think the men had already decided that this was going to be their home and support from now on. Well, you can understand it to some extent. They’d both endured the horrors of being in Birmingham during the war, working in a munitions factory, formerly Doherty’s Light Engineering in Digbeth. Dad had also spent his nights fire-watching and running messages on a somewhat fragile motorbike and survived the close attentions of a German aeroplane on the Shirley Road one evening. Five years footling around at the seaside in north Wales, partly so that Grandad could recover his health, had left them both in need of some real work. Anyway, to get back to my story. The first time Grandma set foot on the smallholding, she was directed down the back garden to use the facilities and found, behind a laurel bush, a charming two-seater earth closet, wooden seats, no standing on ceremony, after she got up, that is. For going down the bank she must have slipped. Neither her high heels nor her fur coat were ever quite the same, I’m told. Interestingly, the stinging nettles were particularly luscious just thereabouts as my sister, Jane, discovered on another occasion. Jane was also a tumbler and once managed to fall into the cesspit, but I don’t think we need to go there.

Grandma also came a cropper one bitter winter afternoon in the seventies, when she was around the eighty-mark, while feeding the chickens. When Helen, my younger sister, came home from school, she couldn’t find her in the house, which was open as usual, and began to worry. With neighbours’ help, Grandma was eventually found lying behind the barn, in the mud and ice, unable to get up. She never so much as caught a cold, as they say, but then she was from Darlaston in the Black Country where, I’m told, they’re made of stern stuff.

But Dad got his comeuppance one glorious August day when he fell out of the Whiteheart cherry tree. In a picking daze, he must have passed out, the sun on the back of his neck, that sort of thing, but landing on his back gained nothing more than a sprained wrist.

As for Grandma, well, I think I can honestly say, that she hated the countryside but grew to love the ground.

Published in Raw Edge magazine.