My grandmother, Anne, was a terrible interviewee. 

The first thing I asked her was: ‘You’re 80 now, aren’t you?’ 

Her response: ‘I suppose so.’ 

That was in April this year, and listening back now, I can hear my sigh. I had come with questions because I wanted to know about Anne’s friendship with Victoria, her best friend of ten years, who had come out as trans in her 60s. 

I wanted to know when she found out, what her thoughts were and if anything changed between them. 

She shook her head. 

‘No,’ she said, ‘It just didn’t come up.’ 

She wanted to tell me about Victoria in her own way. 

My grandma passed away three months after I interviewed her. It deeply hurt to lose her, but I am very glad I got to sit down with her and learn more about her acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

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She met Victoria through a locally run group for retired community members – grandma signed up because she wanted somebody to walk around with.

Before long, they were taking classes together, attending a history group, enjoying day trips and meeting for tea and coffee on Fridays. 

I kept interrupting Grandma with questions about how she found out Victoria was trans and if she had sat her down to tell her.

There wasn’t a specific moment, she said: ‘It just sort of happened.’

She told me that she came to understand it over time, through cups of tea, coach trips and ordinary conversations, as Victoria told her more about her life. 

‘By then,’ she told me, ‘she was already my friend. It didn’t matter to me in the slightest.’

This was also my first time meeting Victoria and after listening to grandma talk about her for so long, I was excited. 

I understood why she was so important to her – she was so warm – and I hope we’ll get to know each other better now that my grandmother is gone.

Grandma’s childhood had been quite strict. Her family moved around without telling her where they were going, and she lost friends each time. Her father was quiet, clever and wasn’t particularly cuddly. 

Despite this, my grandmother was very good at being there for me. I could talk to her nonstop for half an hour, and she would still want to know what happened next. 

I knew so much about her – how she took her tea, that she loved smutty romance books, and which subjects she would complain about. 

LGBTQ+ people never bothered her – the first gay people she met were two women her husband knew, who visited their flat when they were living on a Berlin army base.

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‘I never thought about it really,’ she said. ‘They just came to the flat.’

And that’s how she was with me – her queer granddaughter.

She said she was a little taken aback when I first got a girlfriend in 2022, when my mum showed her a photograph. 

‘All I remember is you were so tall and she was so short.’

That was all that surprised her – but she liked my girlfriend very much. In the years that followed, I’d often catch her nattering away with her, treating her exactly as she treated anyone else. 

She never made a point of mentioning that I was queer, or treated my girlfriend with anything other than warmth. 

Back in the interview, I asked her what she and Victoria had in common and suggested that they were both chatty. 

‘We’re both easy-going, I think.’ 

She thought about it again. 

‘I know that whatever I tell her, she will never repeat it. She is my best friend’.

She told me she thought Victoria was very bright and had lots of friends – she had been an accountant, then a lecturer, and read ‘proper books, not fiction’. 

My grandmother, however, was shy. Victoria was the one who encouraged her to go to groups. 

She told me that when they would go out together, people stared at Victoria. She wasn’t sure whether they were looking at Victoria or at the two of them – wondering if they were together, or if my grandmother was trans too. 

But, she didn’t say anything. She just stared right back.

She only cared whether people were kind, and to her, those who stared weren’t.

Listening back to the interview feels strange now. 

Even though I had known her my whole life, there were things I didn’t notice about her until you sat down and really listened. 

I urge you to do this with someone you love – ask them questions you wouldn’t think to ask in regular conversation. Give them your undivided attention and capture their voice – you never know how much it will mean to you, and to them. 

She told me she was very proud that I was writing this.

So, I’m glad I recorded it. 

At the time, I was trying to understand my grandmother’s friendship with Victoria. But after she died, I found myself listening to it differently. 

It was simply her talking, and now I have her voice.

For ten years, there were coach trips, Friday afternoons spent together, and tea and cake at garden centres. When my grandmother talked about Victoria, she talked about her allotment, her books, her work, and her eyesight. 

And when I asked her what they had in common, after thinking about it for a while, she gave me the answer she seemed most certain of. 

‘She is my best friend.’

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