I stayed with my granny and granda quite a bit when I was a kid. Me and my brother would sleep in a Z-bed, one of us at each end. The flat had two rooms: one was the kitchen and living room with a curtained recess for a double bed where granny and granda slept; the second was a bedroom. I'm not sure why we didn't sleep in the bedroom, but we always slept in the living room. The toilet was on the stairs outside, but if you were a kid you could get up on the chair and pee in the sink.
The flat was in a tenement by the River Clyde, an exciting place for children, but probably considered a fairly scruffy neighbourhood by adults at the time. The Harland and Wolf shipyard next door had been closed as long as I remember, weeds grew in the gutters and all the windows had been broken and we were constantly warned not to play in the building. It wasn't as dangerous as the Clyde, though. Back then, the river was still very polluted. Now there are salmon in it, but then it was black and oily and you could smell it from our window. it wasn't a bad smell, or strong, but it was the smell of pollution. Everybody knew it. They said it would kill you if you fell in, said grown men had jumped in to save babies and neither had surfaced. There was a walkway along the river bank with railings between the walkway and the water. The bank was artificially steep, made of slippery worked stones angling into the water at forty-five degrees. Every day, ocean-going ships would sail up the river, taller than any building but so close you could almost touch them. You could see the men on the deck. When you waved to them they waved back.
The railings were high jaggy things that you wouldn't climb over. You could, but you never would - somebody would spot you from the tenements and then you'd be on to a hiding, for sure. Everyone watched out for children near the river. I remember most things being broken - the swings in the park, the door of the toilet on the landing. There was always a fountain of water in the street from the mains, but the riverside railings were never broken. They must have been checked every day, so there was never a way through onto the treacherous cobbles that made up the embankment. There were too many stories of drowned children, too many people who had lost a relative to the river. It had become a monster, a darkness among us that was only kept apart and contained by constant vigilance.
There wasn't much greenery around though there were some small dusty trees in the park and patches of grass here and there. Quite a lot of weeds too - dock and rosebay willow-herb mostly and some dandelions - pee-the-beds - but there was usually dog-shit in there so you didn't go. The predominant colours were stone and rust, dust and stoor. It was an urban landscape - urban decay, neglect, degeneration - but we were never aware of that at the time. The buildings must have been handsome once - sculpted red sandstone monuments to the bright future of the new working classes and the social benevolence of the ship-yard owners. This had been the heart of a thriving, bustling industrial landscape, with housing for thousands of people. I only remember an isolated C-shaped stand of blackish tenements enclosing a scuffed yard with former wash-houses used to house bins. There were puddles that smelled of sewage. We used to throw bricks in to make stepping stones then chase each other across at high speed. See who would fall in first. We liked the place. It was where we lived.
And I loved my granda. One time we were looking out of the window. He had lifted me up onto the draining board next to the sink and the window was up and we were looking out across the yard. It was a summer evening and we had just listened to the gypsy fiddler who came round the back courts. Granny had wrapped tuppence in a betting slip and thrown it down to him. Me and granda stayed at the window to talk afterwards. He kept his hand round my upper arm while he told me his stories. Years before he had planted some beans in a pot on the window ledge and they had grown up three stories and everyone above pinned the shoots to the wall and to their window frames so the plants kept on growing up then, when they reached the top, came back down the other side and then hundreds of bright orange blooms appeared on the vines. As he spoke, I saw the bean plants growing up the wall opposite us, across the yard, and they were vivid green with beautiful, intense flowers. Years later, I saw beans growing for the first time and I realised it could have been true. My granda told tall stories all the time. He enjoyed it. But that one could have been true.
I've grown beans myself many times since then and I've always wondered why they're not prized as a beautiful ornamental garden plant as well as a productive source of food. I had a garden once in Kazakhstan and we grew beans, marrows, pumpkins aubergines and sunflowers. Before any of the fruit appeared it was the most beautiful flower garden. Later in the season the beans produced kilos of green beans and later we even shelled fresh red beans which were so tender when cooked. I learned a lot of green bean recipes that summer.
My granda never said whether he harvested any beans from his plants. Even if he did. he probably would never have tried this recipe.
Ingredients
A load of green beans
A handful of walnuts
A couple of cloves of garlic
A pinch of black pepper
A splash or two of olive oil
A sprig or two of fresh parsley, oregano or savoury
Top and tail the beans and pull off the strings if there are any. Cut into 7 or 8 centimetre lengths and drop into a pan of boiling salted water. Simmer for about ten minutes and drain.
While the beans are cooking, chop the walnuts garlic and herbs finely. When the beans are ready, mix all the ingredients together and there's your salad. You can serve it hot or cold.