Making Room: Stories Round The Table 4

Lily Cathcart December 23, 2025 0 0

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Read and listen to our next Advent Story Round the Table written and illustrated by Lily Cathcart and read aloud by James Cathcart.

The hum of the oven fills my little kitchen as I turn the dial to 200. I haven’t even checked the packet, which I do belatedly and realise Janet was right all along God bless her soul: 200 will do most everything.

The size of the chicken sitting in the fridge seems excessive now but they might still come.

They might.

Young people don’t always reply to things Trev says, especially post.
He’s not wrong but I thought they might want to see their old gramps this time of year. They might still come. I won’t bother cooking the nut roast though. That would be too much, you know, if they don’t turn up. My fridge is bulging as it is with carrots and parsnips which it will take me two weeks to make my way through, never mind the sprouts. I don’t even like sprouts. Janet always used to boil them to death and…well there’s no coming back from that.

I keep glancing out of the window as the oven heats up. Just in case. I don’t mean to but I can’t seem to help it. I spent so long on those invitations, I’m not a natural when it comes to drawing, Janet was always better at that kind of thing, but they’re my grandkids if I can’t spend an hour leaning how to draw holly and a cute snowman for my own grandkids then who am I?

I send up a prayer for each of them, wherever they are, and force myself to look away. They have such busy and exciting lives, especially now they’re all getting older, why would they want to spend time with a boring old man like me? That’s all I am nowadays, going on about the past and things that they learnt about in history class when they were in school. If Janet was still here it might be different, she always knew how to talk to them better than I did.

The oven buzzes, must be up to temperature. I leave the window behind me and let the hum of the oven fill me up, warming me as I pop the chicken in a dish and sprinkle on some rosemary, oil, and salt. The water is a shock when I go to wash my hands and I have to wait for what feels like forever for it to warm up enough. The trials of winter.

Next I go to the table, the pile of festive table settings I bought look silly for one so I set them aside on a chair. Instead I lay out one knife and fork and retreat to the kitchen to start chopping one carrot and one parsnip. Just as I’m contemplating whether it’s worth doing roasties just for me the door bell rings.

My heart soars but I push it down with force, it’s probably just a salesperson. They all think I’m a gullible oldie but I give them a run for their money and no doubt.

I open the door ready for a fight and standing there with grins on their faces are my grandkids!
They apologise for being late, something about traffic, and come bundling in. I can hardly speak as I hug each one with a face I can only imagine looks like a deer in headlights.

They’ve hung up their coats and started laying the table with my festive placemats before I have even remembered to close the door. Someone shouts through that the nut roast is now in the oven and someone else puts a timer on their phone mid conversation. They always seem to have a hundred things ticking over in their brains at the same time these kids. But it’s nice to know I’m one of those things.

They move around the house like no time has passed since they roamed these rooms as little children, at home wherever they found themselves together. A picture of them, all round cheeked and cheeky, sits next to me on the fireplace. With hair in a mess, covered in mud they smile back at me unaware of what their lives will look like and how much I will miss them as they grow. Which reminds me to take a new picture of them all while they’re here, a proper one, not one of those selfies.

Beth comes up to me with a soft smile, nothing like the crazed grin she has in her childhood picture and missing the little brown bear in dungarees which once seemed like an extra limb. 
‘I hope it’s still ok that we came gramps, when you didn’t reply we wondered but took a chance and came anyway.’
‘I didn’t reply?’ I say, louder than I mean to. ‘Of course I’m glad you’re all here but not one of you replied to my invitations!’
They all look confused and I wonder what I’ve missed.
‘But we did gramps.’ they say. ‘It was you that never got back to our messages.”
‘You’re talking nonsense.’ I tease, confused and pleased in equal measure. ‘Not one message, I would have noticed.’
‘Where’s your phone I’ll show you’ Davey says, his eyebrows furrowed just like his mother when she was little.
‘Here’ I point to my phone on the sideboard by the door.
They laugh but I don’t get the joke.
‘Your mobile gramps, where’s your mobile phone?’ Davey insists with an eye-roll which is all his gran.
‘On the shelf.’ I point next to the lopsided sofa.

He goes to investigate while Katie, James and Isla dance around each other in the kitchen with knives and carrots. I even spot some of the sprouts which I know they’re going to force me to try again. As if I might learn to like them just because time has passed.

‘Gramps, your phone is dead!’ Davey declares, “where on earth have you put your charger?” He doesn’t wait for a reply and starts searching drawers full of things I haven’t seen in months, years some of them.
Realisation hits me.
‘So when you say say messages…’
Beth laughs ‘On your mobile Gramps, texts, how else.’
I glance over at the answering machine. ’I can think of a few other ways.’ I laugh and let myself be ushered to the dinner table, all decked out in Christmas colours and patterns as my grandkids bustle around me, chatting and smiling and cooking without any need for my help.
‘I want a picture of you all before we’re done today kids.’ I declare from my relaxed place at the head of the table. ‘And…’
‘…not one of those selfies!’ they all chime in.
I let my smile take over my face as the sound of their laughter fills me up for the year ahead.

Lily Cathcart

Music in the audio version 'Deck the Halls' by Bamtone and 'Chasing the Light' by Northern Heart, both licensed by Sanctus Media from www.Artist.io.