Lockdown Stories

o, I begin, would you like to hear a true story about when I was a little girl? Yes, says my small granddaughter, separated from me by lockdown, her familiar face on a small screen. I tell her about the time when I was her age and like her, new to infants school, turned around kneeling on my seat to talk to the girl sitting behind me, and how the teacher crept up on me and walloped me on the bottom with her umbrella. How the rest of the class laughed and how the teacher said now you will remember not to talk in class and here we are many decades later and I have not forgotten. I tell her about our old grey cat who slept on the hearth while the chimney was on fire and the fire brigade poured their hoses down the chimney, flooding the fireplace and the cat slept on. And the heatwave where the house was unbearable and my father