Talking points
Jeremy Clarke
Nanny is a full-time 'scrubber' as she puts it. She scrubs for a Mrs P and a Mrs R. She's not used to being on holiday. The inactivity is profoundly disturbing to her. She doesn't know what to do with herself. Most of the time she perches on our fixed caravan's concrete step, puffing unhappily on a succession of Superkings, and staring balefully at the passers-by.
Our caravan is at the entrance of the Valley caravan and camping park. Everyone entering or leaving goes right past our door. All day long the campers and caravaners come and go, surfboards and bodyboards tucked under their arms. Those going towards the beach, from left to right as we look, are generally more cheerful, their heads held higher, than those coming the other way. Nanny hasn't been to the beach herself yet, though it is less than 100 metres away. She isn't interested in beaches. Messy things, beaches. Too much sand all over the place. She would rather spend the week watching other people come and go to the beach, and pass comment on them, than go there herself. And that's how it's been. Nanny perched on the step, smoking and commenting; me inside the caravan asleep or watching TV; the boys out God knows where.
'Look at 'ee!' says Nanny, over her shoulder, to me. I look out of the door. An AfroCaribbean man is going by. He is wearing a wet suit. 'Look at 'ee!' says Nanny. 'Black as a badger's tit!' Being a countrywoman, Nanny's similes are usually drawn from Nature. Some I find instructive. The suggestion that badgers' tits are jet-black has, I feel, enriched my imagination. A little later on she draws my attention to a family — mum, dad and a pair of toddlers in turquoise swimsuits. Their skin is extraordi
narily white. In fact it is actually the colour white. 'Look at they!' she says excitedly. 'White as a dead pig's eye!'
From time to time the boys reappear briefly to demand money or food. 'What's for dinner, Nanny?' they say, or 'What's for tea?—Mutton rings,' says Nanny, to both questions.
When not drawn from Nature, her similes are based on familiar items in the workplace. This man trudging back from the beach in the rain had a face like a 'stewed broom'; another's looked like 'a dog's arse with a hat on'. The man with a face like a dog's arse with a hat on was also 'staring like a conger' apparently.
Nanny hasn't been entirely well for years. She's on 'stair-rods' for her asthma and currently taking a course of 'anti-bollocks' for a persistent tummy upset. Her tummy upset is characterised by loose motions, which fly out noisily, she claims, 'like a flock of starlings'. This perhaps goes some way towards explaining her reluctance to leave the concrete step, which she complains of as being' 'ard as a dog's 'ead'.
Also occupying her attention this week have been the hourly developments in the case of the missing schoolgirls Holly and Jessica. 'I'd get hold of whoever was responsible and take it all off — the whole lot,' Nanny tells the boys enigmatically. 'But that's uncivilised!' exclaimed my stateindoctrinated son, not yet 12. 'What makes you think we are civilised?' I said. 'I didn't say we are,' said my boy. 'But we can at least try to be.' He had me there. I retired from the debate. 'An eye for an eye is what I say,' growled his Nanny. 'Slice it all off, like trimming a frosty turnip.'
If you define civilisation by its basics, namely drains, sewers, roads and pavements, then it has yet to embrace this part of north Cornwall. They've got roads, sort of, and they've got bits of broken pavement here and there, but no sewers as yet. Instead there are holes in the ground, which are grandiosely known as 'septic tanks'. One of these is situated right next to our caravan. It has a sort of dark green flood plain covering the top of it, on which we play cricket.
Will the septic tank overflow or won't it? has been the other main topic of our conversion so far this week. Every morning the boys have excitedly prised up the manhole cover and taken a daily reading using a wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer. Nanny and I have usually gathered round to watch. Nanny likes to stare philosophically into the vileness for some minutes, as though she was thinking, Edna Price: This is Your Life. And each morning the froth on the top has crept nearer the metal rim. I announced emergency regulations regarding the use of the lavatory flush, but in spite of these, this morning, at about 10 o'clock, the tank overflowed. The boys were exultant. Nanny ventured down to the gift shop and asked them if they sold paddles.
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