A gentle pause

Grandfathers aren't just workshops and war stories and wise fingers. Grandmothers aren't the sum of spectacles and roast potatoes and talcum powder. They are spring wrapped in autumn and winter, grass clippings and young blooms stuck away in rotting Hessian bags or pressed flowers hidden on dusty shelves between the pages of crumbling tomes. They are men like yesterday’s news, women like stale teacakes. They were young and foolish once too – still are – frivolous in ribbons and trapped in the accumulated prune skins of age. They were us once. They still are.