Mim was my other gran. Dad’s mum. Tiny in height but not girth, she had many names, but not Gran or Nanna or Nanny! No way. She was Mim or Mimi (pronounced ‘me-me’, something folk on my mother’s side occasionally noted). Doll to her friends, sometimes, I suspect Dolly, and christened Dorothy.

Mim was naturally fun, bubbly, a personality.

Mim took  Heidi and Robert and me fishing on the harbour and once fought off a feral goat that nearly butted me off the pier. A tangle of goat, fishing line and Mim heaving on the decrepit wooden pier, 3 foot above the shark infested waters, ‘the very spot’ she used to tell us ‘where an actress taking part in a shark documentary was snatched during filming and never seen again.’ The truth was of course slightly less interesting, but her story added a satisfying amount of terror to the scene.

It was Mim who taught me to lie on my back in the surf, feet facing the waves and watch surf and sky roll gently overhead.

Mim was married to Pop, a rather stern character. She once confessed that she married him by proxy, never thinking he would survive the war. I believe this was at least partly true.

When Mim was widowed, she kicked up her heels a bit. Driving around in Pop’s enormous mint condition gold Holden Statesman sedan was a bit much, but Pop had refused to part with it. Well, one day Mim spotted a brand new red Barina (a real cutie!) in a service station. She walked in to the station and asked who owned it. A young man nervously replied that he did. And so she offered him a swap. He accepted. That’s the type of woman she was.

Sadly, she wasn’t the type to take too much notice of silly doctors and she ended up suffered a series of debilitating strokes, being invalided for an age, before passing away.

They might say she’s resting in peace, but I don’t think she’s wasting any time lying about. That hyperactive, fun-loving extrovert, my crazy old Mim is out there somewhere telling tall tales, sharing a laugh, catching a fish, maybe even having a beer with some mates. I can even hear the clink of the glasses and her laugh right now. ❤