Donkey Stoning The Front Step Every Thursday

My grandma donkey-stoned that front step and the front window sills every single week.

Down on her knees for the front step, with a bit of stone from the rag and bone man, getting a dead straight white line right along the top edge and sides.

Rain or shine, it didn’t matter.

If you’d asked her why, she would have thought that was a silly question.

It was a Thursday, and the step had to be done.

The outside windows were the same, glass gleaming, and behind them, white nets hanging straight as die.

You’d think she’d got a spirit level on them. Which, thinking about it, she probably had checked with something.

Those nets weren’t really about keeping the sun off the furniture. They were about being able to see out without anyone being able to see in, which as far as my grandma was concerned was the only sensible way to run a street.

She wasn’t one to stand on ceremony about opinions. She didn’t have much time for them, at least anyone else’s.

But she had very strong feelings about what the neighbours might think, which isn’t the same thing at all, and don’t try telling her it was.

The coalman was a particular menace.

Most weeks he’d tip the coal straight into the cellar like a normal person, but every so often he’d leave a load sat out on the pavement instead, and my grandma would be out there within about four minutes, not shovelling it in herself, just standing over it like she’d caught it committing a crime.

She wasn’t bothered about the coal getting rained on. Her concern was always what it looked like, a great black heap outside her house for the whole street to see and natter about.

So if I was there I had to get the shovel out, otherwise it was waiting for my uncle to call round.

Same with the dustbins. Lids on, always, and not because there was anything in there she didn’t want found. There just wasn’t. “Whatever people around here might think if a lid was left off for half an hour.” I heard her mutter to herself several times.

My grandad used to say you could tell which houses had something to hide by how tightly the lid was on, and my grandma didn’t find that funny, ever.

Sunday mornings she was always ready for church, obviously, but the outfits she saved for best was for the working men’s club.

My grandad was treasurer there, so he was down there most nights doing whatever treasurers do with a biscuit tin full of subs money, and most of those nights my grandma went with him.

She always sat in the snug with her friends having a port and lemon and a proper natter, usually about one of the ladies that hadn’t turned up that night.

She’d known every one of those women for at least forty years.

The one battle she always won, or rather the one she never let herself lose, was over the toilet paper.

The outside toilet, like most people had back then, was stocked with Izal. If you’ve never had the pleasure, it was less like paper and more like tracing paper with attitude.

My grandad would complain endlessly, every time he came back from a visit, in a way that would’ve been funny if he hadn’t meant every word of it.

But she never budged, never once bought anything softer. I don’t think it was really about the toilet paper by that point. I think it had become a point of principle. .

She’s been gone a long while now, and the terrace is long gone too, knocked down for rows of modern looking flats.

Nobody donkey-stones their front steps, in fact there are no front steps.

I think about that sometimes, not the house, just the doorstep, and how clean it always was.