(He fought in the war)

The peas offer a, hitherto, unseen resistance. They scatter, flee,
their ranks broken. My Granddad tilts his plate with one coarse hand
and attacks the pitiful green bodies from a different angle with the
crude weapon he carries in the other. His crunching machine of death
takes some whole. A few scatter to the floor, killed in action. Others
are trapped between his lips, protruding out at crazy angles like bomb
debris. Or a crazy green moustache. I imagine what "the crack" was like
with men of his ilk back then. Crazy pea-moustaches for a laugh?
Perhaps not. Cant imagine them calling each other gay-lord either,
though.

My mother tries her best to pretend she is at an entirely different
table than my granddad. I think she may have succeeded in tricking
herself but I am not convinced. I look from my mum, eyes cast
downwards, to my nan, field of vision similarly restricted, to my
granddad, at war. And back. Granddad, nan, mum. Right to left. Mum,
nan, granddad. Left to right. Yep, definitely all on the same table, I
decide. From the way we sit, they could almost be on TV, or in a play.
I am the audience and they sit around three edges of the table, leaving
the fourth open so I can see. This thought makes it easier to sit there
and observe.

On the real TV, which serves only to provide a worrying reminder of
how humans are supposed to interact, Coronation Street has given way to
floods in Australia.

"What I don't understand", my Granddad opens, ominously, "Is why they
don't just get a big pipe and pump it all into the desert." He looks up
from his carnage and scans the table. He takes our disbelief as
agreement. "Eh?", he nods, case closed. He selects a spoon from his
armoury, about as deadly as it is made of real silver. The resulting
noise is truly blood-curdling. The squelching, sloshing and slurping.
Not of blood and blood-loss but of gravy and lips.

"How's our Barry, mam", asks my mum of her brother who she sees at
least every other decade. Her predictable slide into a regional accent
fascinates me at this young age. But not quite as much as does the
counterbalance of her cutlery-holders. Her wrists seem to rise higher
and higher throughout the meal, the angle of the bend more extreme and
the look increasingly genteel. She and my nan compete to see who can
most thoroughly cut and place the smallest piece of food into their
mouths. Without touching the sides.

"Sssssssluuuuurp", says my Granddad.
"Very (sllllllllllllllllllurrrrrup-Ahhhhhhhh-buuurrrup) good. Scott's
been round to cut our grass and Barry-John is working in the
block-paving", my nan, stoically ignoring my granddads whizz-bangs,
fills us in on the goings-on of my cousins, who I think I may have seen
before.

I look to my mum who seems to have been carbon-frozen like Han Solo in
Star Wars, which we watched just last night. Unfortunately for her, she
was captured, mouth open, in a look of abject disgust at her forebear.
Terrible fate. Her hands lie rested on the table, cutlery-holders limp
and weapons of war laid down in hopeless surrender. Jabba's dealt a
body blow. "And what about Scott's Paula and the baby?", my mum breaks
her silence, managing to talk whilst never quite losing that look and
all the while keeping her eyes fixed on the enemy.

"Much better, they've moved back in", expels my Granddad as he jumps
up from the table, deserted plate in hand and marches to the sink. He
cleans the vanquished ceremoniously, carefully placing the bodies on
the stainless steel sink surface to die. And, presumably, to dry. We
remain at the battlefield, pushing the remains of our dinners around
our plates. Donkey-work, looking for stragglers. In stunned silence, my
mum searches for comrades. My granddad leaves the arena, goes to the
lounge and puts the TV on full volume. Even from where we sit, The
Bill, booming and distorted, sounds like a battle raging.

"He fought in the war", my mum, nursing fresh injuries, explains on
the train back home to our loved ones.