Scarlett Sigourney Moffatt.
Being named after stars from the big screen, it isn’t surprising that one of my favourite things to do was to sit down and get engrossed in watching the TV.
That and reading; I have always loved to read and to be read to. When I was little I remember sometimes wishing the day away as I’d love it when 8.30 p.m. would come round. ‘What do you want for your supper, little one?’ my dad would shout through from the kitchen (because clearly it’s easier to shout than to walk ten steps into the living room). ‘Two crumpets please, with the edges cut off.’ Nine out of ten times it would be crumpets with a ridiculous amount of butter on (almost more butter than actual crumpet) then my mam or dad would take me to my bedroom, tuck me in and read me a story.
I realise now just how blessed I am to have had such an amazing upbringing with loving parents because I understand that not everybody has a childhood like this. But I don’t take the relationship I have with them for granted. Don’t get me wrong, me and my mam argue like cat and dog as we are so similar (she would never admit this). But they are my best friends. It might sound sad to some, but we are the County Durham Von Trapps, the Bishop Auckland Brady Bunch; we even sing together in the house. Sickening, I know.
So when I wasn’t being a geek obsessing over Aesop’s Fables or Dr Seuss I was watching the good old telly box. My earliest memory of this is when I’m about five years old and I’m sat on my nanny’s comfy sofa propped up on a big V-shaped pregnancy pillow. Now my nanny (my mam’s mam), Christine Smiles – I know, great name! – is one of those amazing stereotypical nannies. She has a cute little brown pixie crop which sits on top of her four-foot-eleven-inch body (she claims she should be given free wedged shoes from the government) and she is always wearing an olive-green dressing gown and knitting. When she isn’t knitting she likes to moan about the weather, and she gives the greatest hugs and always has a freezer full of goodies like screwballs, choc ices and Arctic rolls. And she has always, for as long as I can remember, had strange little sayings and songs like this little tune:
‘No, you cannit push your nanny off the bus
No, you cannit push your nanny off the bus
You cannit push your nanny, coz she’s your mammy’s mammy
Don’t push your nanny off the bus.’
However, there is one thing about her that’s a little different to a typical nan: she was only thirty-seven when she became a nanny. Looking back now, it’s crazy to think I saw her as my old nanny when I’m only a decade away from being that age myself.
We would sit together for hours on her grass-green leather recliner couch (you cannot ever decline a recline) as she brought me endless supplies of Horlicks and peanut-butter sandwiches. Sometimes she would even let me eat the peanut butter straight from the jar with a little silver teaspoon. If it was a hot summer’s night we would share a big bowl of tinned fruit with squirty cream. My favourite thing to watch with my nanny was Norman Wisdom. A lot of the jokes (as I was only five) would go straight over my head, but there’s one episode where he loses his trousers out of the train window that made me laugh so hard I would cry. I’d annoy my nanny by asking her to rewind that bit over and over again. The living room would literally shake because of the vibrations from rewinding the VHS player. I would shush the inanimate object telling him (yes, the VHS player was male) to be quiet in case he woke up my Grandad Tommy who was always napping.
I used to love it when I got to have a sleepover on a Saturday at my nanny and grandad’s. I’d lie in bed with my Noddy toy (I have had this plush Noddy since I was three years old; he has faded over the years and has had his bell in his hat changed about twenty times and he smells like damp, but he is a safety blanket to me) and I would watch the same two films that I’d watched the last time I slept over. Carry On Screaming! and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Always in that order so I could go to sleep dreaming of a chocolate river. I’d raid my nanny’s knitting cupboard when I watched Willy Wonka as it was full of family-sized chocolate bars, normally fruit and nut (so I would pick the fruit out as no one wants one of their five a day in a chocolate bar). It’s like the unwritten law that you have to eat sweets and chocolate whilst watching this movie; it creates a sweet ambience – that and the fact my mouth always waters when Augustus falls in all that chocolate, the lucky guy. Growing up on Norman Wisdom and Carry On movies from the age of five, it’s not surprising that I have an unusual sense of humour.
As a family we all have quite a warped sense of humour so I can’t pinpoint directly whose genes I get it from. We have never been one of those families that sit down formally at a table for Sunday roast and make pleasantries. I mean when I was a kid we would go to my nanny’s every Sunday and Grandad would make a cracking
