High tea

‘She started to get a bit funny in the head for a while there. She had central locking, but she still went around and checked every door, and the boot. Every time she left the car,’ says my cousin. I think she's talking about her best friend.

We’re having high tea in Collingwood for Nan’s 83rd birthday. Three tiers of West Heidelberg-bred women with three tiers of sugar at lunch on Friday, a time that makes it hard for the blokes to come too. 

‘If she couldn’t remember checking the car she’d go out and do it again no matter where she was. She only realised it was a problem when she got together with Ben and he was like, what’s that about? I think her grandparents were dying or something, there was a bit of stress anyway. A lot of stress.’ 

My cousin emphasises the lot of stress. Her mum directs a quiet Nanny dearest, toward the other end of the table, have another scone. Do you want more tea? She wants a say in what’s happening, wants to take the heat off the grandparents-dying part of the story. The tea’s a bit cold, says Nan. I’ll try a coffee instead when the girl comes back. She usually drinks six cups of Liptons before dawn: I thought she’d lose her tiny mind over high tea, but it's not scalding enough for her.

‘Anyway then she woke up at Ben's in the middle of the night and she didn’t have a zit stick beside her bed. You know a zit stick, for pimples. She usually always had one beside her bed but she woke up and it wasn’t there. And instead of going oh well and going back to sleep she got up and checked the car, then went to the supermarket and bought a new zit stick. They medicated her after that.'

‘I count while I’m walking,’ my auntie says. ‘It started out after the operation and it was hard to walk around the block. Now I just do it in the background while I’m talking to Lee on our walks. In in time with my steps.’ 

‘I make pie charts in my head before I go to bed,’ says my cousin. ‘If I’ve got four things to do in the morning I make a pie chart breaking down the time it’ll take to do each thing.’  

'I'm too forgetful to be obsessive, that's the only thing that saves me,' says my other auntie, the one who speaks so soft you must lean in to hear what she says. 

‘Pa had the spot where he’d sit in the kitchen and nobody else sat there,’ I say, bringing him into the room. It's uncomfortable for a second, but then he's there with us.

‘I look at number plates and try to match them to the driver,’ says Mum. 

Numbers don't give me any peace, but I locked down over food for a while there. Does that count?