The bravery award goes to...

Yesterday amongst my list of gripes with the world, I mentioned men masquerading as employees of BT and trying to burgle my granny.

And yes, this was one of the ones which did apply directly to me, and I feel it’s an awesome story to tell which may go some way to explaining how I’ve become the women I am today.

Yesterday morning my gran who lives up North (well, Skegby) let in two men who claimed to be working for some local branch of BT to check her telephone lines. They claimed there might have been some ‘issues’ with the line following some work they were undertaking in the area.

Whilst one of them kept her talking in the kitchen the other dashed through the lounge and into her bedroom to have a damn good rummage. My gran is pretty sharp and spotted the chap dashing out of site. She hot footed it after him and found him in her bedroom red-handed. I asked her what she said to him and she said ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing in my bedroom, get out now!’. Wicked!

In a stroke of pure and utter genius she ran and got her panic button (something we all ought to have whether we live in warden assisted accommodation or not) and she said to the guy, ‘If you and your friend don’t leave my flat in 3 seconds, I’m going to press this button and someone will be over in a flash’. A very brave step considering she was on her own, in her flat with 2 strange men with very bad intentions and she didn’t really know for sure whether the panic button would get her the kind of help she needed right away.

Thankfully, it seems the men in question were young and inexperienced and they decided to do a runner. Even more thankfully they didn’t lay a finger on her, and she was left shaken, but absolutely fine. She phoned the police who came fairly quickly and told her there had been a spate of these burglaries in elderly people’s homes over the past few weeks.

I spoke to her last night and she was in fine fettle, and I felt so damn proud. There she was at over 80 faced with a situation which would have reduced most people to gibbering wrecks and she had confronted the burglars head on, all 4ft 10 of her. I realised then that this was a side of my grandma I’d never before experienced. To hear her saying the word ‘bloody’ was shock enough, but to imagine her standing her ground in her little home made me well up. If I’m feisty and difficult this is in part testament to my grandma.

My other grandma was neurotic and prone to massive amounts of over exaggeration, pathological lying, dramatisation and hypochondria so I’ve clearly inherited nothing from her.

Oh god.