Every year a Scottish lady called Nan would come and stay with us for a few weeks.
Sometimes it was in the summer, but mostly it was in the winter because Nan was old, and she came to escape the really cold Scottish winters, which she said: “froze ma bones”.
Nan wasn’t her real name, and she wasn’t our real grandmother, but she was part of the family because she looked after our mum when she was a little baby.
My brothers and sister didn’t really like Nan coming to stay. They thought she was a grumpy old lady who said their hair was too scruffy, or their clothes were too tight, or their music was too loud. And also, she wore black clothes and grey crinkly stockings every day.
But I loved Nan, and here’s why.
In the early mornings when the rest of the house was asleep, I would creep downstairs to talk to old Pete, our dog, or I would move the radio dial around to hear strange foreign voices, or I’d set up battles with my little metal soldiers until everyone else woke up.
But when Nan was staying, I would climb into her bed, lay my head on the pillow next to her, and she would tell me stories in her soft Scottish accent.
She could make up stories about anything, just out of her head — not from a book.
She would tell me stories about my mum going to school in a pony and trap along the rutted lanes near Kinnochtry in the wintertime and the children they would pick up along the way. There was Sandy with the freckles and bread pudding sandwiches; Kevin who was always late because he put his head through the wrong hole in his jumper; and Dougal who brought sugar cubes for the pony called Crackles.
But the best stories were the ones where we climbed on Bella the Kelpie, who took us to old Caledonia, where the faeries lived. Kelpies were horses made of water, and they were found around the lochs and streams of Scotland.
Bella flew us over icy mountains and lochs that sparkled, down into green valleys and through dark forests with yellow-eyed monsters called Bogles and Brownies, and across the sea to meet the Selkies and the Mermen. Bella could go anywhere.
All the time, Nan would describe the things we saw.
“Over there — look there’s Elphame the faerie queen with her hair on fire — isnae she bonnie? And see on that black rock, there’s the Selkie — half seal, half lassie. Don’t go too near — or you’ll fall in love wi’ her.”
It was an early dark morning in Wales, and I was huddled under the bedclothes, but I could see everything Nan described as if it was right there, in front of me.
When we came back to our bed at Craigavon, it felt as if we’d been away for ages on a big adventure. The faeries and the Selkies and Kelpies were in my head all day, and I made up my own stories about them. Sometimes I made models of them out of plasticine — but I mashed them up afterwards and never told anyone.
Eventually, Nan stopped coming down to see us because Mum said she was getting too old to travel. I missed our adventures in old Caledonia, but then I began to create my own.
I’m an old man now, but sometimes when I hear rain on the tin roof at night, I take Bella the Kelpie out for a swoop over the dark streams and billabongs of the Australian bush.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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