Nanny part 1

When I think back to when I was a child and think of my nanny the first thing, I can remember is the waft of sausages sizzling nicely on the pan that she cooked for those attending her B&B every summer. The guests ate in the ‘good sitting room’ which was transformed into a dining room, a room I was banned from. My first memory of my nanny is of her cooking those sausages, of which she would always put one on for me.

With twelve kids, my nanny was some woman. The waft of the sausages travelled right through to the ‘new house’, the house she currently resides in, as each time we were leaving she would do a massive fry up to keep us full on our journey home.

This ‘new house’, the one most of my memories are in conjunction with, was where I spent every summer when I was growing up. She moved into it after grandad died as the ‘big house’ just reminded her of him being sick. I guess the new house was her downsizing. She only had three kids living with her at the time so it seemed fitting she get a three bedroomed dormer bungalow, turning one of the sitting rooms into a room for my uncle to live out his days.

Of the summers we spent there, I will always remember one of my aunts surrendering her room for my parents and brother and bunking in with me and my other aunt. It was tight but we made it work.

The house had two bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. The one upstairs had a bath whereas the one downstairs had a power shower. As my father still had to work, he would arrive on a Friday evening and leave early on a Monday morning. When he was in the power shower every Saturday, my nanny would always run the tap in the sink making the shower produce only cold water and keep it running until she heard my father squeal like a little girl. She quickly turned it off and sat down at the table surrounded by us all giggling yet trying to keep a straight face for when my father walked through the kitchen in a towel to go upstairs to get dressed. He never knew which one of us did it, but I guess he had his suspicions.

It was those summers where we stayed for weeks on end that made my nanny feel like a second mother to me. We used to spend a lot of time at the beach, the joys of living in a coastal town. We were at the advantage of being able to walk there and back with the aid of two buggies housing two smaller cousins, and then there were three boys between five and seven and me. The buggies were laden down with all the paraphernalia that went with the beach. We didn’t have the room for six buckets and spades so we compromised and learned how to share in the process. I will always remember my nanny with one cousin in her arms, another in my mothers and that was the only way me, my brother and two other cousins got to see the water. It was too dangerous and we were too small to do it any other way.

My nanny, my biggest cheerleader, signed me up for summer camps before we would arrive as a surprise because she wanted me to feel at home down there and didn’t want me stuck in a room just watching tv. She signed me up for two weeks of tennis camp which I loved. I walked to and from the grounds with a friend I made one estate over, Aoife.

The swimming club that met twice a day for a week down at the pier I wasn’t as fond of. I quickly learned that even though I loved to swim, that I was petrified of drowning. I progressed from beginner to intermediate but refused to jump off the pier for fear of drowning. My nanny always had the towel ready for me to jump into after the swimming lesson ended and drove me back to hers where I would be brought through the back entrance of the house and directed straight into the shower as I was covered in sand. No sooner was my hair dry before I had my second lesson of the day and the ritual continued until the last day of the camp. As I ran into the towel and my nanny’s embrace, she whispered in my ear that she dared me to jump off the pier, just once for her. I took up her challenge and when I did it the instructor immediately told my nanny that, should I return next year, it would be in the advanced class. She was so proud of me! She enveloped me in a hug when I finally made it to the shore. I wrapped my hands around her neck and whispered ‘thank you!’

As the years progressed and I got older and was able for the more ‘grown up’ activities. I was then able to participate in the annual Christmas card game on my own. The buy in was £1 and the winner took it all. The game was twenty ones, where you had to get more than twenty-one before you could knock on the table ending the round. The highest score was thirty-one and you had three lives to burn through. We divided ourselves into two groups, the top three in each group getting the opportunity to play against each other for the money. As my brother was in bed, I felt so special sitting beside my nanny throughout the game. She would offer me advice and I would take it as she was a pro. Every year she got into the final six, and every year when she won giving her winnings to me. She called me her good luck charm.

Getting older still and we went as a family to France and brought my nanny with us. After seven hours in the car together trying to find the bloody camp site before it closed for the night was a nightmare. We were crushed into the car like sardines. My father was f ing and blinding in the front, my mother with her nose in the map absolutely positive we were going in the right direction. Eventually we got there and thank God it was for three weeks as it took a week for my father to be able to relax. Another memorable time!

The whole three weeks we were there my nanny didn’t dip her toe in the water once. My brother was older then and every night after dinner we played 21’s. As she kept winning, the pool of money kept building as she refused to claim it. On the last night of our holiday, there was over what would be equivalent to €50 in the pot. When she won it, she divided it up between my brother and I equally. We were bowled over by her generosity and we nearly bought all of the local shop’s cheep chocolate the next day before we departed the camp site for the beautiful dock, La Harve. It took us seven hours to get to the camp site but only three to get back to the boat. I was laughing in my head as I listened to my music on the portable cassette player as we had to wait for two hours before the boat full of people beginning their journey started to disembark. Naturally then it had to be cleaned and spruced up for the people, like us, who had a roof rack full of wine. The wine was so cheap over there that they actually packed it around us in the back of the car rendering us immobile. When we stopped halfway to the boat for a much-needed toilet break we had to be unpacked carefully and then repacked again when our stiff legs were finished pounding the pavement, our bladders empty.

My parents fought in the front of the car for those two hours and my nanny asked us in turn what our favourite part of the trip was. My brother obviously said the swimming pool but my answer astonished her. I said that my favourite part was spending time with her. She moved a bottle of Chardonnet and squeezed me as close as the Sauvignon Blanc would allow.

I was always the type of kid who was thoughtful and took things to heart. if something was bothering me, I would go all quiet and moody. I was at the age for the first change in a woman’s life cycle and, after rearing nine daughters, my nanny knew only too well. She knew by me that the change was about to happen sooner rather than later and she was right, I got my first period a week later.

After spending three weeks in France, we then spent a few days in my nanny’s as we were dropping her off anyway. What harm was it to wind down from a fabulous holiday. Besides, the story of the past three weeks where the only noteworthy thing to mention apart from the cards were the seven hours trying to find the campsite grew arms and legs.  

Nanny was sitting beside me and I could feel her swat my hip and said nothing. She was up to something. She knew that each and every one of her daughters were petrified of spiders so she spun a yarn saying the spiders over there were massive. They leaned in closer as I played along.

‘There was this on night when a spider the size of a football was just sitting quietly in the corner of the mobile home. We didn’t know what to do with it, only that it needed to be taken care of.’

The aunts were engrossed in the story.

‘I volunteered to jump up onto the seat because that seat was going to turn into my bed and I wasn’t going to be able to sleep knowing it was there. Shay (my father) was busy with the barbeque and I was tired and just wanted to rest my head.’

As the aunts grew closer and closer with every word, she knew she had them hook, line and sinker. When they could come no closer, she threw a scrunched-up tissue at them making each and every one of them jump. One of them even ran around the kitchen begging for someone to get it off of her. Nanny’s bubbly laugh shone through the screams and there were tears in her eyes from laughing so hard. I was in stitches too but it was my nanny’s laugh that was the shining star in that story.

The next day was departure day and the sizzling smell of sausages were enough to get me out of bed. She stood at the end of the stairs, pan in hand and was making sure the aroma hit the upstairs landing.

Still giddy from the night before, she shouted up ‘get your sausages when they’re still hot!’ making everyone’s salivary glands who stayed in the house that night dribble from the smell. She put the ones that were now freshly cooked in a dish under the grill as she cooked some more, a trick she used when she did B&B in the old house.

I was the first to run down the stairs, followed closely by my father and then a couple of aunts and finally my mother and brother. We ate those sausages laughing and joking and ended up throwing parts of sausages around at each other. My father of course eating every bit extra that he could fit into his mouth.

As we were saying goodbye I began to cry. My nanny sat me down and explained that it wasn’t really a good bye, it was more I’ll see you later. Content with that I was packed between the sauvignon Blanc and the chardonnay.

I left with a heavy heart, my belly full and tears in my eyes. Who knew that the nanny of old was going to transfer into the nanny of today, a woman whose mind was obliterated to such a degree that she can’t remember how to play 21’s.