We sit in Nanny’s flat and laugh our way through the mountain of photographs. Conversation turns to the olden days as her great-grandchildren call it (they mean the 1960s!) and we all have stories about Nan & Gramps or as I call them "Spend & Save". She loved slot machines (see pic right) and he panicked (see below) about every penny he couldn't wrestle out of Kwiksave.
Later we discuss politics and Northern Ireland. My family have old-fashioned ideas mixed with Protestant stoicism – it’s easy to keep a tight upper lip when you have a loose grasp on the medicine chest. Religion and bigotry often go hand-in-hand just as Seroxat adds to that air of everyone getting along and going with the flow.
Before long Arlene (only 3 years older than me) says she isn’t sure that she believes in homosexuals (what am I then? the fucking tooth fairy!). She doesn’t like them parading – though of course she’d fight for the rights of Orange men to march. 'I don't care who you are, I see you as a person', she says. 'Yes,' I think 'because you're totally blinkered to anything that doesn't fit in with your lifestyle or how you would like the world to be'. She equates her struggle of not getting along with a colleague (who just happens to be Catholic – pure coincidence) to centuries of persecution and unequal treatment by church and state.
Richard and I manage to let it go but it seems obvious why her brother moved to Australia especially after visiting us with his Catholic boyfriend. My other gay cousin has a black partner but I went past both their limits and entered two mixed marriages. The first didn't work - well she was a woman and we all know the divorce rate, so lasting as long as we did was against all odds.But Richard is ... I am so embarrassed to tell you... yes, he's um, well, sort of... English. God alone knows how she'd cope with all that information. I never thought of us as liberals but reading the Guardian must have taken its toll. They probably think of us as Libertines. But they're family and we love them. It's best to love the Christian but forgive their Christianity if you can.
We sit in Nanny’s flat and laugh our way through the mountain of photographs. Conversation turns to the olden days as her great-grandchildren call it (they mean the 1960s!) and we all have stories about Nan & Gramps or as I call them "Spend & Save". She loved slot machines (see pic right) and he panicked (see below) about every penny he couldn't wrestle out of Kwiksave.
Later we discuss politics and 
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