The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Gaggy's Roast Potatoes and Granda's Greenhouse

The prose nonfiction serialisation by Andrew Jamison.

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Gaggy’s Roast Potatoes

The name for our grandmother was Gaggy. I don’t really know why. Perhaps it was an endearing mispronunciation from a grandchild which just stuck. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, Gaggy is what she was called. I only remember going to her house for Sunday dinner (called ‘dinner’ but eaten at lunchtime) once or twice. But what I do remember were her roast potatoes. She must have put them in the roasting pan along with the beef, because instead of being crunchy, they were sticky and soft on the outside, having picked up the beef fat, and what resulted was a very delicious spud. We would sit at the fully extended circular Formica table in the kitchen. I can’t remember anything that was said, but I remember being there with them, at that moment, eating, my grandfather (Granda) in his thick glasses and grey v neck tank top and Gaggy with her shock of white curly hair, and her smile. They say youth is wasted on the young and I often feel like I should have taken more in from my childhood, and asked more questions, such as ‘how do you get the spuds like this?’

Granda’s Greenhouse

Granda, a heavy smoker died of lung cancer, when I was about 8 or 9 – I can’t quite remember when. It was the first time a relative had died. At the time it was very upsetting, and as a child I was kept from news and updates about his condition as it worsened and was advised against seeing the body or going to the funeral. I don’t remember much about the episode; however I do remember on the day of the funeral going to our friend’s house to play and thinking the whole time about what was happening at the funeral. There are a few things I do remember though: his wicked sense of humour, his ability to have little phrases, jokes or songs to hand, his red smiling face, his thick-rimmed glasses, his grey v-neck jumper, a packet of gold Benson and Hedges peeking out of his shirt pocket, his pigeons, feeding his pigeons, as well his greenhouse. It’s the greenhouse I remember most vividly. I can remember one day, when I might have been there on my own, and he took me in to it and presented me with a tomato taken from the vines. We went inside to the kitchen’s little Formica table and he sliced it in half and sprinkled it with salt, and we sat there eating them in silence.