Aren’t Nanas brilliant?!

I ♥ my Nana. Not only is she my biggest fan, she’s funny too.

Nanas are brilliant. They always have cake for you, far too many sweeties, several types of biscuit and Turkish Delight secreted about their person. Nanas always have welcoming boo-sums (as my Nana likes to call them) and nothing feels as good as getting a hug from your Nana. Nothing is ever any trouble for a Nana when it involves their grandchildren. Nanas watch cookery programmes and read ‘Good Housekeeping’ and have ornaments and good china. And you could break that good china by accident and they wouldn’t even really mind, even if it was 50 years old and a present. Nanas always have toffees in their handbag and a packet of tissues. Nanas are always glad to get a phone call from you and make the best sandwiches. It’s compulsory for Nanas’ sandwiches to taste far nicer than everyone else’s.

Nanas are always proud of you. I’m proud of my Nana. She does loads of stuff online, sends texts, knows mobile phones and cameras better than I do, always looks stylish and glamorous. She’s not proud of my dirty gardening shorts. That’s one thing she’s not proud of.

I’m not sure my Nana knows how funny she is, in a naturally comical way. She comes out with lines, spontaneously, that comedy writers sit and search for. What’s worse is that my Nana has a loud Manchester whisper and I’m sure other people are in stitches about the things she says.

Once, I took her to RBG in Manchester. Restaurant Bar Grill is a restaurant where lots of famous people hang out. I’ve seen Graham Norton in there, Dwight Yorke, several other footballers and so on. It’s good food, but for a while in the 90s, it was uber-fashionable. We went for lunch one day.

I don’t know why, but she decided to tell a joke about Jesus on the cross. My nana is not at all religious, and she thinks Jesus is funny. She did all the actions – arms out wide – funny voice… and when she got to the punchline: “Peter…. I can see your house from here…” half the waiters were behind her trying so hard not to laugh and keep their cool ‘game face’ on.

Today, we were talking about books. We love to read. She’s found an author we’d not read and she was explaining about the opening event in the first novel. She’d said it was a man getting tortured for being in Ikea. Only my Nana can mix up Ikea and Al-Qaida. Only my nana can mix up HRT with HIV and raise eyebrows about middle aged ladies getting HIV treatment. I love the images she creates, though. I like thinking of Bin Laden in Warrington Ikea with all the screeching plastic scousers and their numerous rowdy scouser offspring. That would be torture. If someone had put his house right next to Warrington and made him go to Ikea every Sunday, I feel sure he’d have given up before then. Or else Sweden would have been in for a bombing.

What I also love about my Nana is she can make anyone smile. She had a full-on conversation with the lady in Gregg’s, and then with the lady in the travel agents, and then when a girl backed in to her in the post office, she thought my Nana was staring at her for being rude, gave her a stare back and my Nana said ‘Oooh, you have LOVELY hair!’

She then said ‘Do you think it was a wig?’ to me. That’s what I love about my Nana. She’s funny and she’s kind. She gets people talking. She’s the nicest lady you could ever meet except maybe my Auntie Mary, one of her very best friends.

Anyway, me and my Nana are planning a Thelma-and-Louise-style road trip through the Dordogne. I’m not sure if it’s where she thought she wanted to go – sometimes things in my Nana’s head are nicer than they really are. She likes the idea of sitting in French cafes drinking coffee, but in reality, she asks for tea, gets something weaker than gnat’s piss with sterilised milk to boot – and it’s not quite how she imagines it. Maybe I will take her some PG Tips in my handbag and some fresh milk in a mini-flask.

One thing is for sure though. We’re having separate rooms. One of us snores. I’m not saying who, but one of us didn’t get much sleep in Bruges and one of us was very crabby when she arrived in Reims. One of us slept perfectly fine thank you very much.