Ian McMillan: Everybody needs an auntie like my Auntie

MEMORY is like a fishing net, isn't it? You cast it over the side and you've no idea what will come up, flapping and gasping for breath. And, to drag the fishing image out until it almost snaps, you don't know which bit of bait they'll bite at, do you, those memory fish?

The other day, I was down in Staffordshire, in a village on top of those mysterious moors on the dark side of Leek. I was doing a show in a village hall and, afterwards, a man came up and said he used to visit relatives in Yorkshire, in "a little place called Wombwell. Did I know it?"

"Wombwell?" I said, the excitement of recognition making my voice a bit squeaky. "I live next door, in Darfield, the Buda to Wombwell's Pest!"

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He looked a bit baffled by my European reference so I steered him on to safer ground. "Did you remember Grace Mann's ice-cream caravan in the Top Market at Wombwell?"

His bafflement faded and his eyes shone more brightly than the Moon that hung over the moors. He nodded vigorously and I could see that he was thinking about those lovely cornets and wafers you got from Grace Mann's ice-cream caravan; wafers that dribbled pure creamy ice-cream down your best cardie, and you just didn't care. In fact, you would have been tempted to lick your cardie as you walked down the High Street – if you'd not been nervous of your mam giving you a sharp scutch round the back of your neck that was still bristly from a trip to Harry Holden's barbers.

See what the memory net does? It pulls you in and takes you on a journey from Grace Mann to Harry Holden via a dripping wafer and a chafing neck.

Grace Mann was my Uncle Charlie's sister. Charlie Mann was married to Gladys, although we didn't call her Gladys, we just called her Auntie. Throughout my childhood it was Auntie and Uncle Charlie, never Auntie Gladys.

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And, of course, they weren't my real auntie and uncle, because this was South Yorkshire in the late 1950s and everybody was your auntie and uncle. Except the stick man. He was just a bloke with a lisp and splinters. More of him later.

I was born at Auntie and Uncle Charlie's house in North Street (near East Street, across the road from West Street, not far from South Street: they knew how to name streets in those days) in January 1956.

My dad was away at the end of long naval career, holed up in dock in Plymouth, and so my mother made the short trip from Barnsley Road to North Street to have me.

Then, after that, I spent a lot of time at Auntie and Uncle Charlie's. I'm not sure why, but maybe you're always drawn to the place you come into

the world.

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Also, let's face it, Auntie indulged me and let me have my own way in a way that your parents never could. All kids should have a place like Auntie's that they can retreat to, the equivalent of a middle-aged man's shed or a toddler's comfort blanket.

She knew that I liked baked beans for my tea, so that's what she gave

me. When my mother would have insisted I had a big dinner with veg and gravy, I knew that Auntie would give me a bowl of baked beans with a side-plate of bread and butter cut

into quarters.

Even now, all these years later, baked beans and bread and butter are my ultimate comfort food.

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Auntie also knew that I liked to drink Andrew's Liver Salts with my

beans and bread, when my mam would have made me drink dilute orange or water.

I loved it when Auntie got the tin out of the pantry and dug the spoon deep in the Andrew's and plopped it in the glass of water and it fizzed and fizzed like Vesuvius.

I'd glug the froth deeply then turn to the beans and bread. Auntie would smile indulgently in her flowery pinny, even when I let out a supersonic burp that could be heard in Lincolnshire.

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And the stick man with the lisp and the splinters? He came round selling what the middle-classes call kindling every Friday evening just as I was finishing off my beans and pouring more Andrew's.

He looked a bit like Ken Dodd and he'd always poke his head round the back door and shout "Thtickth!" in a piping tenor.

Auntie and I would take his sticks and laugh and laugh. One week we were doing impressions of him when he stuck his head in and we all said "Thtickth!" at the same time in the same high voice.

My mother wouldn't have let me do that, and that's why everybody needs an auntie like Auntie.

Funny how you go from ice-cream to sticks, but that's the memory net for you...

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