My Mad Old Grandad

I recently caught up on the second season of SLOW HORSES, still remarkably faithful to the Mick Herron books and featuring Gary Oldman looking and sounding uncannily like my old grandad.

The thing about my old grandad, my mum’s dad, was that he was insane. Everyone agreed that he came back from WW2 a different person, and he’d never ever talk about his experiences. I knew him as affectionate, very difficult, a little magical and a lot batshit.

Back in the Seventies, pubs would have big perspex display lanterns hung over lamps on the front of the building to advertise whichever beer owned or supplied the pub. Some were like olde-worlde lanterns, some were bloody great plastic cubes. Because it was the Seventies, Grandad had a home bar of sorts – basically just a long run of cabinets and shelves made out of pressed woodchip board and plastic faux-wood laminate. But he was happy with it. It just seemed, somehow, unfinished.

And then I was dropped off at their little house on a Saturday morning to see a giant perspex Bass beer cube=shaped lantern sign balanced on top of grandad’s home bar.

What you need to know here is two things. One, I was pretty sure the Spread Eagle on Rayleigh high street used to have one of those on the front. Two: Grandad was an ice cream man.

Which means he drove to the Spread Eagle in his big old ice cream van on a Friday night, got pissed, staggered out, looked up at the big red and white Bass sign, realised in a moment of hoppy epiphany that this would complete his cherished home bar, got in his van, drove around for a bit until the pub was vacated and the high street was quiet, parked up his van, climbed on top of it, lifted the sign, tied it to the top of the ice cream van and drove home at high speed.

So, if you are an older reader from the area, and for decades have been telling people of that haunting moment when you saw what appeared to be a mobile pub that also sold ice cream ripping down the Arterial Road at midnight… that was my grandad.

(Taken from a recent edition of my free weekly newsletter Orbital Operations, which you can read and subscribe to at this link here.)