The grimness of being 'Granny'

My alter-ego or nom-de-clef is 'granny', but most people in the British Isles tend to have a 'nan', 'nanny' or a 'grandma'. 

In  the case of 'nan' it's obviously a class thing.  If you were rich enough you employed a separate nanny, and if you weren't, your grandmother looked after you.

I spent my early years abroad (daddy was a colonial policeman) so had a privileged upbringing that inevitably included a hired nanny, of 'a darker complexion' as we used to say.  To call someone 'black' was pretty rude in our circles, and I'm still uncomfortable with it today.

My earliest and fondest memory is of Negesti, an Eritraean woman whose native tongue was Italian, Italy being the colonial power in her childhood.  She used to call me 'brutto', which means 'ugly'.  She was looking after me, aged two or three, when I accidentally fell downstairs and fractured my skull. 

(This could account for some of my character.  I had an EEG at fourteen which suggested a slight brain abnormality.) 

Dear Negesti, lovely lady, lovely nanny. I have vague memories of her looming large over me at bedtime, telling me stories that I couldn't understand, but that could just be my lack of English as much as hers.

I was reminded of this by the new animated short film that's been nominated for an Oscar: Granny O'Grimm.

It's not so much the film or the story that caught my eye, as the word 'Granny'.  Sometimes I feel obliged to apologise that my boat's not called 'Nan Buttons', so it's good to see the 'G' word get some public traction.

Nevertheless, once I'm past the Granny bit, this film is delightful, and pretty sinister.  It's beautifully written and spookily spoken by Irish comedienne Kathleen O'Rourke, and has been perceptively animated by Brown Bag Films. 

In particular, I love how the '3D rendering' of Granny - while she tells the tale - contrasts with the '2D traditional drawn' look of the tale she tells.  This highlights Granny's own reality. 

Furthermore, the animation really helps convey both her infirmity and weight.  Showing 'weight' is a very hard thing to do in computer animation.  Characters such as Shrek seem to float along, as if on the moon.  Granny thumps, and you can feel the gravity as she shifts the chair to sit in it. 

After you've watched the original film, take a look at Granny's reaction to the Oscar nomination. 

To finish this post I looked for something on Kathleen O'Rourke.  And surprisingly there's very little on her.  The best I found was this YouTube video of her doing standup three or four years ago.  It's fairly edgy stuff in places, like a Hibernian Sarah Silverman.)

[Thanks to Ed Fox's tweet for alerting me to this]

Comments

[Andrew]

Dad's Mum [South London] was Granny and Mum's Mum [North Wales] was Grandma.
Thanks for Granny O'Grimm. She is definitely more Granny than Grandma!