Finding Gran's wrath

BECK ELEVEN

It's good to have secret hiding places for your precious little keepsakes.

Maybe you like to hide treasured items in your knicker drawer or behind the pot plant in the hallway?

Hey, who am I to judge? Maybe you hide important things in your prisoner's purse?

The point is, we all have secret little hidey holes and we don't like it when someone accidentally stumbles across them.

Being a nosy little burglar, I thought I knew everything about my Grandma's house. When I was younger, I could have drawn a treasure map to every brooch and handkerchief, but last weekend I was forced to admit that I have slowly lost control of the situation.

In Timaru recently, I discovered that Grandma's hiding places are as changeable as the wind.

Once upon a time, you could really rely on the elderly for routine. Their breakfast plates would be laid out before bedtime. They would never suddenly flick to the TV3 news or call a Popsicle iceblock anything other than a TT2.

One of Grandma's favourite activities is to go to Caroline Bay with a thermos of tea. It was such a cold day that my mother had to use one of our picnic tea towels as a shawl.

Anyway, with steely, idiotic determination, we stuck to the beach picnic plan. As Aunt Helen was heaving Grandma into the car, I ran a mental checklist:

Thermos? Yes.

Rug? Yes.

Grandmother? Yes.

Seat for grandmother? No.

Potential for orthopaedic surgery? Yes.

Now, nobody wants to see a geriatric with plastic hips, knees and God knows what else getting down on a rug, let alone back up again, so I rushed inside to look for a deck chair for Grandma.

I found a blue canvas chair folded up, and returned to the car feeling quite smug, because Grandma would definitely think kindly of me for saving her elderly joints.

At the very least, she could have met my kindness with indifference. Instead, I got called Rebecca and spoken to as if I had suggested liquorice allsorts were unsuitable for dentures.

My grandmother is not a rude woman, but she was acting disproportionately angry over the putting of a chair into a car. I had discovered her latest secret hiding place. Tucked away inside the concertina of the deck chair canvas was half a bottle of sherry.

I once did an interview with a woman from Alcoholics Anonymous. In her heyday, she kept a Coca-Cola bottle full of vodka and tied it onto a piece of string so she could dangle it out of the toilet window. She would nip into the loo and hoist up the bottle when necessary.

This is not to suggest that Grandma Eleven is an alcoholic. I'm just saying hidey holes for bottles of booze take some genius.

Grandma must know that if something's not locked down it could end up in a gullet, and the next time she goes to make trifle, it's going to be an all ages version, and nobody wants that.

So the hiding place had been rumbled, the sherry was coming on a beach picnic and Grandma was in another flap because she thought we were breaching Timaru's liquor ban. So the bottle was secured in the boot and nobody was allowed to touch it, not even to warm up - not even Mum, who was wearing a tea towel.

Grandma phoned me last night. She said I was the last person to touch her car keys and they haven't been seen since. She called me Rebecca again. I wish I'd never found that hiding place.

- © Fairfax NZ News