My grandad was a boxer in his heyday. Now, the only thing he fights is the stairs. If I’m correct, he’s ninety-one years old give or take a year and although we have lived in the same city for all of my life, we have never been close. I remember as a child we would go around to see him and granny, tease the dog, drink cup after cup of tea until we were about to explode, and play scrabble against my granny. I used to be able to talk to my granny for hours (and still can when I find the time in this busy thing called life) but with grandad the bond just wasn’t the same. Maybe it had something to do with the marble or two rolling around in his head, him being half deaf, or the fact that it would have taken a crack team of translators to decipher what he said, even when he did have his teeth in.

I suppose me and my grandad just missed out on each others lives. He was too old and I was born too late.  

I don’t know what my other grandad did for a living; he died when I was about five. From what I remember he was full of life and because me and my twin sister Emma were the youngest, we were treated like royalty. Emma’s first memory has something to do with grandad, nursery and milk (I’ll have to ask her exactly what it was!) but for me one of my earliest memories is jumping out of my grandad’s car to open the gate on the way to his allotment.

My clearest memory of him is when he told me and Emma that he could fix anything. We were both looked up at him amazed and started to quiz him, thinking of things that are impossible to fix.

 “Grandad Pyecroft. Can you fix a car?”

“Grandad Pyecroft. Can you fix a bus?”

“Grandad Pyecroft. Can you fix a balloon that’s popped?” I asked him, thinking that we’d finally found something that wasn’t in his power to fix.

“Thomas, I can fix anything!”

I miss my Grandad. It has been along time since he died and I’m ashamed to say that it has been a long time since he has occupied my thoughts. He’s up there now though.

 I suppose me and my grandad just missed out on each others lives…