“I said, these would cost at least $50 each in the shops,” repeated her granddaughter.   She held up one of Owen’s stuffed animals.

‘$50 each!’ thought Edna.   She did a quick mental calculation and worked out that this meant more than $40, or five hundred percent profit on each toy.

To his amazement poor Owen found himself with an unwanted helper from then on, as Edna offered to do anything possible to help speed up production of the cuddly little money-spinners.   At first she was more hindrance than help, however, she soon became proficient at the less skilled part of the work, stuffing wadding into the leather bodies, allowing Owen to do the designing, cutting out and stitching together.   But even this sped up manufacture enough so that from then on all of their grandchildren found themselves with cuddly toy animals for Christmas and birthday presents, and Edna and Owen were able to save hundreds of dollars on the cost of presents each year.

Not that their twelve grandchildren minded at all, since the toys were of a higher quality than most store bought equivalents, and were decidedly more attractive than the current trend for Cabbage Patch Kids and other “Ugly Wuggly dolls” as Owen called them.

By the second year of joint production, Edna became skilled enough so they had a large surplus of dolls, which she was able to sell at the monthly fund raising stalls at her local church Opportunity Shop.   She reached an agreement with the lady priest whereby Edna donated two dollars to the church from each toy sold.   Which still left them with around $40 profit.

Although generous to her grandchildren with cakes and buns supplied by the church buffet, Edna economised as much as possible when feeding them anything else.   One of her “special treats” was a “tall glass of cordial”, which consisted of a glass of tap water, with just a faint swirl of flavouring added.   Enough to show up under close scrutiny, but not enough to override the taste of the fluorine in the water.

“That’s all you really need,” Edna would insist, handing over a glass of “streaked water” as Lisa-Marie called it.   “There’s no need to have it so strong that it burns off your taste buds.”

“But it’d be nice if it was strong enough to taste,” Lisa-Marie would whisper to her mother Glynis, who would quickly shush her.

Another of Edna’s “taste treats” was her long, cool glasses of milk.   Although milk was often on special at her string of regular supermarkets, Edna discovered that it was much more economical to buy Bonlac instant milk powder.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, since milk powder is just milk without the water.   Add water to the powder and you get good, natural milk.   That is as long as you mix it strong enough.   Unfortunately Edna’s milk was mixed almost as weakly as her cordial.   So that it was nothing more than water with a pale, whitish tinge to it.

Around the time that Lisa-Marie was ten years old, Bonlac started to advertise their milk powder on television.   The commercial highlighted the fact that, unlike normal milk, you can alter the taste and creaminess of powdered milk by simply increasing or decreasing the amount of powder added to any container of water.   On the commercial people who liked non-creamy milk only added a tablespoon or two of milk powder to their water, while singing, “I’m a two-spooner,” or “I’m a three-spooner”, and those who liked rich, creamy milk would add four or five spoonfuls of powder, while singing, “I’m a four-spooner”, or “I’m a five-spooner”.

Little Lisa-Marie would sit on a cushion on the floor in front of the television, clapping her hands to the rhythm of the advertisement, happily singing along, “Gran’s a teaspooner!” Although her mother Glynis had to warn her against singing the teaspooner song when they were at Granny Edna’s house.

THE END