If BT could cast a line up to heaven, my Nan would be the first one on the blower. ‘Tom, bring me that phone. I want to speak to Him.’ ‘You mean God?’ ‘No, not Him. I mean Him: your granddad.’ She’d get me to read out the number as she dialled it. I can picture her now: glasses perched at the end of her nose, hunched over with age, repeating and verifying each number as if she had just learnt to count, thumping each digit on the keypad with a wrinkled finger, mumbling something angrily incoherent as it connected. Before He even answered, she’d begin ranting as if ten years without him had never passed. My Nan likes to moan. If words were air miles, she could live on the plane. ‘Me hips are digging in and paining [sic] me like daggers, I can’t hardly walk, me eyes don’t work properly, and what’s more, if I want to see anything clearer than a shadow, I’ve got to hold my bloody eyelid up! Then there’s this damn perm that’s as flat as roa...