Lunch With Dirty Deaf Granddad

Lunch with Dirty Deaf Granddad this week.

Dirty Deaf Granddad knows a lot about life. He's been around a while, seen a lot, knows many people, but DDG doesn't know he's hard of hearing. Very hard of hearing. So bloody hard you have to shout yourself hoarse. DDG accuses you of sitting there whispering at him and there is nothing worse than trying to repeat your stories over and over because every story, even if it's not a funny story, and I don't do funny stories, loses its shine when it is told for the third or fourth time.

So you end up with DDG saying, "Why are you telling me this? What is your point?"

You begin to wonder yourself. You start to contemplate getting up and going home. But DDG enjoys these lunches so much you decide to tough it out. It's a lunch that will last all day.

DDG drinks low alc beer. You ask for a soft drink. He says no he's only got hard liquor and thinks that is terribly funny. Ha ha.

So you open DDG's fridge and help yourself to a wine. By this time DDG is on to his second beer, even though he has told you he's sworn off alcohol. And meat.

It's now well past lunch time and you still haven't eaten and DDG is raving on about Muslims, and the bloody natives, and the underclasses, and godknowswhatelseiswrongwiththefuckingworldtoday. That oaf Donald Trump. He's a buffoon.

And what's Hillary Clinton got to offer? Just Hillary. That's what.

And on it goes while I keep returning to the fridge to fill my wines and DDG keeps going out to have a pee. He comes back to explain why. When we get old, DDG says, our bladders lose their stretch and don't go back into a nice little elasticised bag like they used to. He uses his hands to demonstrate. So my old bladder, he says, is like a hard-skinned basketball - don't screw up your face like that girl, he says to me, this is scientific - and I have to empty mine all the time.

I don't want to think about DDG's bladder so I talk about the newspapers. Mistake.

On and on and on he complains until finally we go and eat. Chicken.

DDG talks about roots he has had. Ewww.

The waitress has a nose ring, purple hair, shaved at the sides, and is wearing tiny black shorts with stockings underneath. Good God Girl says DDG what happened to your nose? She just smiles and takes his order. She's from Lancashire. She knows her chops. At least you don't have tattoos, he says. Not where you can see them, she says back.

He pays the bill and leaves a big tip. Make sure the owner gives it to you, you clever girl from Lancashire, DDG tells her, and I take DDG back home to his seat by the window overlooking the sea. It's five o'clock. Time for his nap.