MY GRANNY MARGARET Kelly is eighty-eight years old and lives in Rutherglen just outside Glasgow. She is small and slim with cheekbones that could slice bread, and although her dark hair is white now, she still looks decades younger than her years and is as sharp as a tack.
She still goes on the bus twice a week to the bingo and can easily fill in half a dozen cards at the same time, whereas I would struggle to cope with marking down the numbers of just one single card.
My granny has had a hard life, but she has never lost her sense of humour.
She brought up four kids with my granda Danny: my dad John, my uncle Bille and my aunties Lydia and Carol, and she lost four more to childhood diseases that rampaged through the overcrowded tenements in the Gorbals.
There was never enough money and she remembers that everyone left their doors open because no one had anything worth stealing.
Their tenement flat was just a room and kitchen with everyone crowded into the one bedroom. The toilet was outside and shared by all the other families in the close. Everyone was in the same boat and just got on with living check by jowl.
When I was a little girl I used to love going to my granny’s. I was allowed to stay up and watch TV late at night, curled up on the sofa with my aunties and a big bag of boiled sweeties.
I used to love rummaging through her cupboards and finding old biscuit tins with stern-looking Scottish soldiers in kilts on the lid. Inside would be lots of old photographs of generations of Kellys and some of my dad as a wee grumpy boy.
My granny said he cried for the first two years of his life and the hospital were glad to see the back of her first-born when she took him home.
My granny Kelly cooks real traditional Scottish food like Scotch broth and ribs and cabbage, but her triumph is a massive clootie dumpling. The magnificent pudding is the size and shape of a massive pumpkin and stuffed with fruit, nuts, cinnamon and silver sixpences. It was wrapped in a pillowcase and boiled in water for hours on end. The smell of the spices was just wonderful. I would always get a massive slab to take home with me but I would scoff it all before I got out the door.
Sometimes when we visited my granny was in bed with the lights off and the curtains drawn, suffering one of her horrible migraine attacks, but usually she would be in the kitchen making endless ups of tea and coffees for all the family that came visiting and rustling up grills and bacon in her ‘magic’ frying pan. She used to produce food at an extraordinary rate. I’ve never known a quicker cook.
Even though I didn’t have my daughter Rosie until I was thirty-six, my mum and dad married very young, when they were eighteen. This means my daughter has young grandparents and also a fit and energetic great-granny.
When I was researching my family tree as part of a feature for GTV, I had to interview my granny. She was the kind of interviewee that makes you want to burst out cheering – funny, interesting, entertaining.
She was an enormous help when I was writing my autobiography – providing me with lots of background and also some cracking old photos.
She is modest and rather shy, but the absolute salt of the earth.
I hope I look half as good, and have all my marbles just like she does when I reach my eighties.
Lorraine Kelly is a journalist and presenter.