Okay, true story time. My first wife's grandmother was a teetotaller, signed the pledge, the lot. She not only didn't drink, but she didn't like other people drinking either, which put her into a semi-permanent foul temper when she was in my company, I can assure you. And that was only on "family" occasions when neither of us could avoid the other's company.

To business: It's Christmas and, as usual, my mother-in-law went through the arduous task of making not one but two trifles - one with the requisite amount of booze added, the other innocent of a drop. Christmas din-dins comes around, and the turkey, the chicken, the pork - damn, I'm drooling all over my keyboard again - is consumed with the appropriate amount of gusto by those who had absolutely nothing to do with cooking it all.

Then comes dessert. "Would you like some trifle, Nana?" asks my ex-dearly beloved, full of Christmas spirit, although this was artificially engendered through the liberal consumption of her favourite tipple. Not naturally given to jollity, my former missus.

You should understand that at this time, mother-in law is in the kitchen out of sight. Father-in-law, brother-in-law and I were in the lounge trying to find out if drinking more whisky was going to make us sober again. I can assure you, as the result of assiduous repeated experiments over the years, that it does not. But we must persevere, mustn't we? So grandmother and granddaughter were more-or-less left to their own devices. Dangerous to all concerned, in both cases.

My former ball-and-chain serves gran up with a heapin' helpin' of trifle - but, as you may have guessed by now, out of the wrong bowl. Gran scoffs the lot, likes it, and asks for more. Granddaughter duly tops the plate up again, and gran disposes of that as well.

At about that time the Xmas pud is declared ready in the kitchen, is semi-ceremoniously carted into the dining room and deposited on the table, and the brandy is poured over the top. CK lights it and everyone goes ooooh and aaah as if it was some kind of burning-bush miraculous event rather than the simple application of chemistry or physics or whatever.

"Mum, would you like some Christmas pudding?" asks my mother-in-law.

"No thank you. But I'd like some more trifle," replies that withered but pretty-well inebriated ancient crone. Mum-in law goes to give her some trifle, and realises two things:

(a| Her mother had said that magical word, "more", and
(b) The unlaced trifle has not been touched.

I had a lot of time for my mother-in-law. She wasn't stupid and she was rather quick on the uptake when uptake quickness was required.

"You want this one?" she asked her mother, in a strangled tone.

"Yes, that one" says gran, just about licking her lips.

"Okay" says mum-out-law, and puts a small quantity on her plate.

"Oh, I think I could manage more than that," says the old biddy. Her daughter duly adds more. Gran tucks in like there's no tomorrow.

By now, we'd just about all realised what was going on. There were a number of clues, not the least of which that the old besom was actually smiling, something unheard of before, at least in my arch-ex-wife's lifetime. And I'd always wondered who she'd taken after. What's more, gran wasn't complaining about anything at all. She was a past mistress of the "It's too hot, it's too cold, the younger generation is rubbish, do this, don't do that, especially if you like it" form of peevish geriatric monologue. She tried a few jokes. She even smiled at one of mine. She was pleasant to everyone, even her son-in-law with whom she'd had a running thirty-year feud. Further, when she got up to go to the little girls' room after scraping her plate clean for the third time, she was even less steady on her pins than normal.

We all looked at each other and just burst out laughing.

Anyway, you pay for your fun and after dinner, when we were all sitting in front of the television in the usual Christmas Day post-prandial stupour, she went firmly to sleep and snored all afternoon.

The moral is obviously that you shouldn't trifle with an old teetotaller's trifle!


The idiot also known as Capfka ...