A catalyst for slovenly behaviour

My grandmother said, " Them that reads has dirty 'ouses." She said this in a rich Black Country accent. She married a man from the same street, lived and died within a mile radius from where she was born and the furthest she travelled was Blackpool on a charabanc. She made chain and nails in a workshop at the bottom of her garden.

If she saw me reading a book as a child she would clack and clatter her false teeth at me with disapproval.

What she would make of my writing such catalysts for dirty homes I cannot say.

My grandfather, who died before I can remember, was a collier. He liked beer and smoked Woodbines. He would sit in the chicken house of an evening and talk to the chickens and feed them small cakes. In the winter he would bring them in to warm by the range with its blackened hearth. I think I would have liked him.

My uncle was a foundry man. He worked with cast iron, making covers for drains and manholes at Dudley and Dowells. He said that there were monuments to his work all over Britain, and there are. There is one at Ninewells in Pembrokeshire. At the end of his working day his hands would be lined like a drawing with coal dust. Sadly his lungs were too. He would bathe in a tin bath in front of the fire while we read or talked in the 'best room' next door. When he was young he kept pigeons in a pigeon loft. A great giant of a man with these gentle cooing creatures. He loved everything I did and would have been so proud.

Frances Lincoln are taking East of the Sun and West of the Moon onto their list for publication in Spring 2013.
In my case my grandmother was right. I read, I have a dirty house, but my mind is too full and lively for the dust to settle.