In the southwest of England in the county of Cornwall there is a village called Four Lanes. The village sits on the top of a large hill. There is always a cold wind blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. A television mast stands on the top of the hill, dominating the landscape for miles around. At night its red beacon winks in the inky darkness.
My grandmother used to live in a terraced house on the top of the hill, two fields away from the mast. Her driveway opened onto the busy main road, but this never worried Gran. She would reverse out into the road blocking both lanes of traffic. It was a miracle that she never caused an accident.
Gran drove an old blue Austin 40. She would push my brother and me into the car, slamming the door behind us. Cyclists often had to jump into the hedge as Gran drove by, with only inches between them and an early grave. We could see the whites of their eyes as they jumped from their bikes, the A 40 almost touching their sides as it flew by.
The heart of Gran's home was the back room containing the stove and the dining table. The pantry was under the stairs, the bathroom hidden behind a sliding door, and the kitchen by the back door. The large window looked out onto the mast, facing north. On the opposite side of the room to the window stood the dresser on which Gran kept her paint brushes. She was a good artist and liked painting pictures of the Cornish coast and the chimneys of the old tin mines.
Every morning Gran would read about the horse races in the newspaper; she would draw a circle around the names of the horses she thought would win. It was the one time of the day she liked to be left in peace. She had grown up with horses, and had lived most of her life on a farm. In her youth the only means of transport available to the villagers was the horse. Gran not only enjoyed riding horses, she also enjoyed painting them. Her children often said she loved horses more than anything else in the world.
When Gran became too old to ride, she watched horse-racing on television. She knew a lot about horses but she never bet money on them. She watched horse-racing because she loved horses. She wasn't interested in making money from them. It was a pity as she usually guessed the winning horse correctly. I often wanted to borrow her newspaper after she had looked at it, take it down to the betting shop and make a few bets. As a child, of course, I couldn't.
Now I am old enough to get into the betting shop, Gran is no longer with us. She was a wonderful person and is much missed by her grandchildren, if not by the cyclists of Cornwall's windy lanes.
