Cup of Tea With My Gran

CUP OF TEA WITH MY GRAN ———————————————— Setting the scene because if I don't somebody else will and they'll get it wrong. The Tay Bridge Tavern, my gran's place, off the Perth Road in Dundee, a Tuesday afternoon, three days before I fly out for Ignition. Six regulars in. Brian in the corner with his Times crossword like always. The dog asleep under table four. My gran behind the bar wiping the same glass she's been wiping since I came in twenty minutes ago. I'm at the bar with a cup of tea because she will not pour me anything else this week. She has informed me, in the manner she informs me of things, that I am in training, and that her granddaughter is not going into a championship tournament smelling like the back room of her own pub, and that the answer to my request for a half pint was no, and the answer to my follow-up request was also no, and the answer to my counter-offer of a small whisky to settle the nerves was Lacey, I will throw you out of my own establishment. So. Tea. ———————————————— GRAN: You've not eaten today. ME: I've eaten. GRAN: What did you eat. ME: A thing on the train. GRAN: That's not eating, that's preventing collapse. Sit there. [She produces from somewhere behind the bar a plate of toast and beans, which she has apparently prepared in advance against the possibility I would arrive un-eaten, which was, statistically, a good bet.] ME: Gran. GRAN: Eat. [I eat. She watches me eat. Brian turns the page of his crossword. The dog sighs in his sleep.] ———————————————— I want to say a thing about my gran, because if I don't I'll never get round to it and it deserves saying. Her name is Margaret Drummond. She is seventy-three years old. She has run this pub for forty-one of those years, and she ran the previous one for nine before that, and the one before that for four before that, although the one before that was technically her father's and she only ran it on Sundays. So. Fifty-four years of pub, give or take. She raised my mother in this building. My mother raised me in this building. I learned to walk on the carpet that's now under table six. I learned to read on the back of a Famous Grouse mat. I lost my first tooth on the same brass rail my gran is currently leaning on, and she pulled it out herself with a bit of dental floss and gave me a Coke and told me to stop crying because I was making the regulars uncomfortable. My gran does not understand wrestling. I want to be clear about that. She has tried, in fairness — she watches the matches when the federation puts them on the telly behind the bar, and she nods at the appropriate moments, and she has learned the names of approximately half my opponents but pronounces all of them confidently wrong. Karry-mato. Sayer-shay. Mary-saul. I have given up correcting her. The regulars correct her. She does not adjust. But she understands me. And she understands, in the specific way only somebody who has run a pub for fifty-four years can understand, what I am for and what I am not for. And she will not pour me a drink this week because she has decided I am in training, and the decision is final, and there is no court of appeal in this building. I love her. I want it on the record. I am writing this down — well, I am saying it out loud and a friend of mine is writing it down, because I do not write — and I want it on the record. I love my gran. She is the only person in my life who has ever told me to do less. She is the only person I have ever listened to. ———————————————— The reason I'm in town this week is I needed to see her before Ignition. I do not have a thing where I am sentimental about preparation. I do not have rituals. I do not, the way other fighters apparently do, sit in a hotel room the night before a match and write things in a notebook or play scales on a guitar or whatever it is the wee man in the painted face does. I have, on the night before most of my matches, gone to a pub and had a couple. I have, on the morning of every match I have won, had a full English breakfast. I have, in fifteen years of doing this, never once asked myself how I felt about a fight, because I do not have an opinion on how I feel about a fight that is more useful than the fight itself. The fight tells you everything. You don't need to ask it questions before it's started. But I needed to see her. That's separate. That's not preparation. That's me being thirty-one years old and going home for a couple of days because the next time I'm here I will have either won the inaugural Women's Championship of an entire bloody fighting promotion or I will have come third or fourth out of eight in a one-night tournament, which is not nothing, but is also not the thing they are going to put on a wall. I want to be in this room before that happens. I want to drink the tea my gran will not let me decline. I want Brian to ask me, like he asked me twenty minutes ago and like he asks me every time, how's that wee fighting thing going for you, hen, and I want to answer him, like I answered him twenty minutes ago, with aye it's going alright, Brian, ta for asking. I want the dog to ignore me. I want the carpet to be the same colour it was when I learned to walk on it. If I win Ignition I am going to come back here and I am going to let my gran pour me a drink and I am going to put the belt on the bar between us and we are going to look at it for a bit. We are not going to make a fuss. We are going to look at it. Probably Brian will look up from his crossword. Probably the dog will not. And my gran will say something that is not what I expect her to say, because she has never once, in seventy-three years, said the thing I expected her to say. And I will know what it means, because I have known her my entire life. If I lose Ignition I am still going to come back here, because where else am I going to go. ———————————————— A thing about my style. I have been getting questions, since I made the bracket, about the way I fight. The questions are coming from podcasts, from the federation's marketing people, from one journalist who I think genuinely meant well but used the phrase unrefined approach in a way that made my gran, watching from behind the bar, set down a glass with a very specific kind of force. The questions are basically the same question. Why don't you do the things the other women do. Why don't you study tape. Why don't you have a system. Why don't you have a coach. Why don't you, for the love of god, do at least one push-up. The answer is that the way I fight is the product. I have explained this to promoters who tried to soften me up, and I have explained it to the federation when they hired me, and I will explain it to whoever is going to ask me about it after Ignition. The way I fight is exactly what you are paying me to do. If I started doing it differently you would pay me less and I would win less and we would all be unhappier. The system is that there is no system. The strategy is that there is no strategy. I am going to walk into the cage and I am going to hit somebody harder than they hit me until the situation resolves in my favour. This is what I have done at every level of this sport that I have ever competed at. It works. It will work on Ignition. The other seven women in the bracket can have their tape and their coaches and their post-match interview talking points. I have a gran who will not pour me a drink and a denim vest with letters that are peeling, and I am as ready as I have ever been. ———————————————— GRAN: Are you done with the toast. ME: Aye, gran. GRAN: Good. Get out of my bar. You're putting the regulars off. ME: Brian's not put off. BRIAN, WITHOUT LOOKING UP: I am put off, hen, but I'm being polite about it. ME: Right then. I'm out. Love you, gran. GRAN: Win the thing. ME: I'll do my best. GRAN: Don't do your best. Win the thing. ME: Right. Aye. That. ———————————————— I'll see you all at Ignition. Buy a drink for whoever's near you. Tip the bar staff. — L.D.