Grandad Jeff

Sometimes kids have to spy on grown-ups, as this sweet story shows!

- Gabrielle Mullarkey

I’m staying with Grandad Jeff for the weekend. Not my idea, or Mum’s. Judging by his face when she drops me off, it’s not his idea, either.

As soon as Mum has driven off, he says, “Pass me that pile of newspapers by the door and we’ll head off.”

“Where are we going?” I ask, scrambling into his van, which smells mouldy.

“To the tip!” he says, as if it’s a treat.

I’m about to text Megan I’m going to the tip with my grandad, but decide it sounds a bit – literally – rubbish, as a place to go.

Worse still, when we get there, he doesn’t just dump the papers, he leaves me with his mate ‘Stig of the tip’ in a hut and we watch him join people scrambling up the side of a pile of junk and rooting about in it.

I’m well embarrassed, but Stig gives me some little chocolate cups full of peanut butter, which are sickly but lush, and when Grandad Jeff comes back, he’s got a ‘haul’ to show me, of a toaster, kettle and hairdryer.

“Can’t believe people chucked these,” he snorts.

“What’ll you do with them?” I ask, scrambling into the van.

“Recycle them,” he replies. “Get them working and give to a charity that supplies odds and ends to people in need.”

When I finally step into his house, which I’ve never visited before, I reckon he could do with charity himself. It’s small and dark and smells like the inside of his van.

I was all set to boast to Megan about my Grandad Jeff, who’s been around the world working on oil pipelines, but now I’m not so sure. He hasn’t been around much since I was born, what with working abroad, and after Dad left when I was six, Mum didn’t want much to do with “that side of the family”.