“Her kitchen had strings of onions and fat hams hanging in glorious torture from twisted hooks in the ceiling. She smoked her own kippers up the chimney, skewering them in pairs with discarded knitting needles. For this she kept a wood fire. The other fireplaces were fed on coal. She had a glass-fronted cabinet lined with jars of homemade preserve; pickles, tomatoes, pears, cabbage, and in the middle a baby rabbit. This was not for eating. It was an ornament. When the wind blew and the cupboard rattled the rabbit bobbed up and down in his transparent prison, his ears buckling slights as they hit the lid seal.
The furniture was plain: a scrubbed sycamore table, a deep enamel sink, a few unmatched chairs and an evil-smelling coal Rayburn that left soot on my grandmother’s scones.
‘Won’t hurt,’ said Grandmother. ‘Look at me.’
Yes, look at her, bunioned, bulbous, hair in bulrush rolls, butt-headed, butter-hearted and tenacious as a buckaroo”
1997
BGW
Books Gone Wilde - LGBTQI community library Darwin 