THE warnings on the television and radio all said the same. Don't go outside unless you have to.

But granny Margaret Gillard just had to fight her way through the rain, wind, sleet and snow of Monday morning to pick-up her eight-year-old grandson Marly. And she was pictured on the front page of the BEN by photographer Andy Lambert being drenched by a lorry as she made her way on her journey through Bradshaw.

"I would have walked through fire to pick-up that little boy," said the 63-year-old, of Bradshaw Road. "I would have swum there if I'd had to as well." Mrs Gillard, a dinner lady at Thornleigh College, said she was not bothered about the storms or being sprayed by the lorry.

She said: "People are so soft these days. I have always had to rough it, so I wasn't bothered about it, neither was Marly.

"As the lorry was coming towards me I could see people thinking 'oh no, she's going to be drenched'.

"But I just put my umbrella up and stopped the water hitting me.

"The photograph was very good. My friends were phoning me up after seeing it in the paper."

She finally met Marly, an Eagley Primary School pupil who was enjoying a day off, near his home on Turton Road without any further trouble from lorries, although the weather continued to cause both of them problems.

Mrs Gillard lives with her husband Stephen and they once ran a green grocers shop on Tonge Moor Road.

She has two other grandchildren, Rael, 12, and three-year-old Kane.