Snapshot: On Scarborough beach with Grandad
I remember this picture being taken, and the shyness I felt when my mum asked me to hold my grandad’s (her father’s) hand, but I’d never seen it until I was helping my parents sort through some of their belongings this summer. We were on a day trip to Scarborough in 1965 when I was four, and what strikes me is the contrast between me, small in my thin, summer dress, and my grandad layered up in his Sunday best and sporting the trilby he always wore outdoors (my mum still has it). Just his feet are bare for paddling.
My dad says that no one would have dreamed of setting out on a day trip in casual attire (“We didn’t wear shorts and T-shirts back then …”). My mum points out that everyone relied on public transport in those days, and by the time we went home in the evening it would have turned nippy.
Grandad was nearly 70 when I was born. He’d served in the first world war, losing his older brother – they both fought in the trenches. He had a shaky hand and I was always told it was because of shellshock (though Mum now thinks he may have had Parkinson’s disease).
He was a quiet, kind, gentle man. He and my nana lived near Birkenhead, and when I visited he’d take me to Birkenhead market. On one of our shopping trips, he bought me The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, which I loved – it fuelled a childhood interest in fantasy fiction. He also bought me a notepad and a whole packet of pens, which I thought the most decadent purchase ever. He knew I loved to write and draw.
He grew tomatoes on his allotment (the sweetest I’ve ever tasted) and supported Tranmere Rovers. He died when I was 13. We visited him in hospital when he was sick, and he showed no interest when my dad told him how his team had played that day. I knew then that he must be really ill and he died soon afterwards. I remember Grandad very fondly.
Wendy Varley
Playlist: The track that led straight to my heart
There Is a Light that Never Goes Out by the Smiths
“Take me out tonight / Where there’s music and there’s people / Who are young and alive / Driving in your car / I never, never want to go home”
It is the start of the new academic year at the University of Melbourne. It’s warm, I’ve just moved out of home and a handsome student from the year above is pursuing me. When he comes round to my flat and gives me the Smiths’ album The Queen Is Dead, he is in with a good chance. When he plays There Is a Light that Never Goes Out and says how it reminds him of me, resistance is useless.
We listen to that album and that special song over and over, wrapped in each other’s arms – the start of our relationship. Long lunches on the lawns, evenings at my flat, nights in the pubs and clubs around Fitzroy and Carlton. Weekends at demos, and always the Smiths. Inspired by Meat is Murder we even try vegetarianism, but can’t keep it up.
The relationship doesn’t last. Having secured my affections, he gradually loses respect. He starts putting me down. I should lose weight. My clothes are tatty. My face is too spotty and my laugh too loud. I overhear friends asking why I put up with it.
I arrange to meet him in a pub one night and tell him it isn’t working. In the bar, he gets down on his knees and pleads with me to stay. Stupidly, I weaken. Two weeks later he dumps me. Two months after that, I find out he’d borrowed The Queen Is Dead from a record library and never gave it back. I still have it.
Alison Yung
We love to eat: Evy’s banana, walnut and pecan cake
Ingredients
2 cups of sifted self-raising flour
1 ½ cups of good-quality brown sugar
¾ cup of olive oil
1 tsp salt
Splash of vanilla essence
2 eggs
3 or 4 bananas
1 tsp lemon zest
A handful of walnuts and pecans
(You can add a splash of cheap Greek brandy if it’s not for children)
Sift the flour into a big mixing bowl and add all the ingredients except the nuts. Beat well. Add the pecans and fold them in to the mixture. Then pour the mixture into a long loaf tin lined with baking paper. Add the walnuts on top. Bake for one hour at 180C. Check it’s done after an hour using a metal point (my mum made me one using a piece of garden wire) – if it comes up without crumbs or a wet mixture, then it’s cooked.
This is my reliable, staple cake recipe, which I got from my Greek sister-in law Evy, who is married to my older brother Marc and lives in Athens with their two kids. But I have added a few new goodies to it. Evy has taught me a lot about Greek cooking and the importance of good-quality, freshly pressed olive oil, which we are fortunate to have from my father’s olive trees at our house on the island of Aegina in Greece. I think the beauty of this cake is that it uses olive oil, so it doesn’t feel heavy or rich. It has a perfect consistency. I have served it to kids and friends alike, who all rave about it.
Asia, my 21-month-old daughter, also loves it, although I alter the ingredients when baking for her: no brandy and less sugar. A clever trick is to bake it just as your friends arrive for dinner (the smell as it bakes is scrumptious), then you can serve it warm with vanilla ice cream for a yummy dessert.
I feel lucky to have a family that is international – my husband is Mexican, my parents are Australian – and to have travelled around the world so that our cooking has become inspired by many diverse flavours and ingredients. I say “our” food, because my father also enjoys cooking, as does my younger brother, Kym, who moves around the kitchen like an excited and enthusiastic creative beast. My husband is exceptional at Mexican delicacies – chiles en nogada being my favourite (even if it takes him all day to make): dry, smoked ancho chillies with fresh walnuts, peeled and crushed into a creamy sauce, and pomegranate seeds and apple – yum!
Mia Oeser-Loperena
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