Memories

While reading Terri's excellent post about nostalgia, I remembered a story that my grandfather used to tell us when we were little.

When he was very young (we are talking before the First World War here) he lived with an old woman who had sort of adopted him, this was always very vague and I don't think anyone now knows the full story. She was not very kind to him and he more or less hated her. She had very poor eye sight, which has a big bearing on the story.

Anyway, my grandfather and his younger brother were playing in the garden while the woman cooked dinner - some sausages. Being very poor she cooked the food over the fire, not having a proper cooker.

Anyway, the boys were playing around and one of them found a dead rat. Not having much in the way of toys, they started playing with it, throwing it higher and higher and catching it again. Then one of them threw it and it didn't come back down again - they didn't know where it had gone.

A while later, the woman called them in for dinner. In they went. Then something caught the eye. There, in the frying pan, was the dead rat, now thoroughly cooked. It had fallen down the chimney!

Suddenly not hungry, they ran for their lives. But the woman never talked about it, so my grandfather's only conclusion was that she must have eaten the rat along with the sausages, not being able to see the difference.

He used to cry with laughter when telling us this story, I guess it was his one victory over that old woman.

Hope you haven't got sausages for dinner!