Dan Morris: Real heroes are all about the bacon

Grandma was a card shark - a ‘hustler’, if you will.

While she was a demon knitter, and a sorceress when it came to crotchet and other grandmotherly things of the like, the glint in her eye always belonged to the more traditionally immoral pleasures of the world.

For this, I will love her for all eternity.

I haven’t thought properly about my dear old gran in some months. Sadly, she passed away a couple of years ago, shortly before my daughter was born. But with her birthday coming up next week - December 25 of all days (the apple fell incredibly far away from the tree) - the last few days have seen her at the forefront of my mind.

I always thought of her as being a deliciously unconventional grandma. She preferred cherry brandy to tea, never opted for a Wherther’s Original when a shot of cherry brandy was going, and in the ‘scone debate’ of cream first versus jam, she’d scrape the thing clean and down a cherry brandy.

Yet, as I’ve happily come to realise from talking to pals and acquaintances over the years, a lot of grandmas are like this, and it’s absolutely bloody fabulous.

Though undisputedly ever-ready with a cuddle, a wise old ear and the best roast dinner in the land, Grandma was at her happiest at the card table, winning hand and favourite tipple firmly in her grip.

A proud daughter of the East Midlands, she followed my parents and I to the west some 15 years after my dad’s career had sparked a move to Staffordshire so that he could work on this very paper.

With my lovely uncle in tow (her seventh born), Nan upped sticks from her Nottingham abode and made a new life for herself and her son in the warm proximity of my mum.

I was just coming to the end of compulsory high school myself, and the arrival of Grandma and Uncle Gaz as close neighbours represented to me a wonderful part of what was already an important watershed moment in my life.

I’d always loved Grandma deeply, but with her now only living round the corner, as the next phase of my education began we grew closer.

As any other sixth formers of my generation will undoubtedly attest, the truly wonderful thing about doing your A-Levels in the early Noughties was the marvelous space in your academic timetable that suddenly appeared.

No longer shackled by subjects that were of no interest to you, your scholastic attention was focused on three to four areas rather than 10 or 12, meaning that in a day formerly populated with back-to-back lessons, much of your time was now assigned to ‘free periods’ for private study. Fat chance…

As a bushy haired 17-year-old who wasn’t quite brave enough yet to darken the door of his dad’s local, my ‘free periods’ were not devoted, as they should have been (stay in school, kids) to study, but to what at the time was a burgeoning passion that would come to define me, and remain as a mainstay interest for the next 20 years.

Comic-books - I couldn’t get enough of them; the artwork, the storytelling and the sheer fantastical fantasy were like a drug to me, and have remained so ever since I bought my first Spider-Man all those years ago.

Monday mornings would see me ritually visit my local comic shop following a double A-Level psychology class. With this being the only academic session of the day, the following ‘free periods’ were populated with purchasing the titles of the week, and going home to gorge on them. Yet before I arrived back at my humble abode, I would always make a very treasured pitstop.

With everything timed to perfection, Grandma would fling open her door at noon and present me with the best bacon and egg brunch anyone from anywhere has ever tasted, ever. My meal washed down with a stein full of tea (I’d poked at the cherry brandy idea and she was having none of it), I’d then regale her with my proudly nerdy purchases of the week, until my uncle arrived home from his morning’s work, a similar feast awaiting him.

It was a simple moment in our weekly diaries, yet it was just for us, representing that purest of time spent - that where the only purpose is to enjoy the company of another.

She couldn’t have given a fig about comics, but she gave far more than a fig about me, listening to me prattle on and always cherishing our special hours together.

The life I lead today is a beautiful one - still filled with a very loving family. But if I miss any moments from my past, it is these.

Not only during those precious brunches did Grandma listen to all of my teenage woes, she also backed my bonkers decision to go to America to play the guitar, and later paid for me to train as a journalist.

It is with no exaggeration that I say I owe her the world - my most character-building choices in life having been supported by her without question, and with boundless love.

And so, as your big day approaches, Grandma, happy birthday. I’m sorry I never got to take you to Vegas (we’d be living in an Omaze mansion now if I had), and all the more sorry for boring you about Marvel’s finest on all those happy Mondays.

Especially because, truly, you were the only superhero I ever needed.