Pick n Mix

Blinds are up, the quiet of Sunday, outside a few birds, a cat on a shed roof watching the birds, the two papers that are delivered have been taken from the doormat. Its the paper in his hands and after sport, the french press, paper, quiet , those habits were not rejection I had grown I wasn’t a boy.

As Norman had too his mothers voice strangling his own and choking, stuffed in his throat and ears bad anger bad lonely kicking coke cans home, forced to accept her life and not my own adopted or not. You played with magnets, swallowed a marble, space men moved with magnets, the kinder egg and Cherry Coca Cola mix, corn on the cob and free mints at Captain America, the lobsters in the tank, fresh flowers and wet floor, it was near Nearys and not near where I would live, fuckin far off far from the green buses and puke on Grafton St; Its there the BUS STOP shop with tickets and tabacco and taxed sugar, she’s coming to take you to a town where they make computers and milk chocolate. at Olivers I ate egg and cress on wheat bread and asked for a keyboard to play, asked for Nike with air bubbles. The Friday night Mars or Marathon - water or milk, cold both, once on a buttered toasted bread, walking Chanel road, the houses all lined up, a story behind a door, halloween horrors, birthday balloons, children funerals, bees in jam jars, in the centre of the village, whether you walked to the shop or school, was the church. The decorated building, the incense stench would cause me to faint during a summer wedding. The grushie coins from a deep trouser pocket, men with moustaches, women blow dried blonde, the wind and pain. The fifty p,the punt, the tens and fives, different to the queens ugly face on gold pounds.

I don’t remember watching as much cartoons I remember waiting for my da, waiting to walk the road I took to and from school, to come to take me to the basement apartment in Dartmouth Sq, I had a bed next to the television. We added vegetables to Campbells soup. During winter while kicking through the leaves around I kicked up a note, 20 pounds and all the kinder eggs and almond mars bars and fizzy sweet cans swirled around my stomach and mind, a party on my own, a party I didn’t want to get dressed for or choose a present for or write a card or turn up late or not want the English table the dry pastry the peas and slow cooked meat the carrots cut into cubes. It was and it wasn’t what took me off my wheels, finding solipism in beef hula hoops, pickled onion space invaders, salted potato discos, cups of bovril after walking home without gloves or a hat. I had to fit in. The weekly shop with my ma becoming my mum to not ask for the rows of toys and cereals we couldn’t afford so I opened the packs, the top or bottom, walked away; came back and open the plastic, touched the toy, the isle was big long and each week they didn’t notice the boy who ripped through boxes of cereal for the plastic toy. Companies put money into reaching easy minds that had to have advertised plastic figures or puzzles to be a part of the youth and single mothers who didn’t have the extra money to buy a cereal their child wouldn’t finish didn’t buy these sugared puffs, they bought boring Weetabix and Cornflakes. I was one that reverted to getting what was advertised without my mother, the situation is selling to youth without a penny, you expect the boys and girls to not want what they have, they have jars of penguins, clubs, snacks and biscuit jars just for them, separate to the adults, us we grew with the adults and their tea, plain biscuits, plain cereal, toast for three meals, milk, chocolates that we don’t want to eat, chocolates with liquor strong and sour, jellies that weren’t sour, jellies of jam, crisps of garlic and dry bread, dry Swedish crackers, ryvita, crisprolls, and one similar to the rusks I ate as a baby. The poor cupboards didn’t have 12 packs of crisps and a selection from the sweetshop, the food was for the adults and what was wanted by me was in a corner shop. My friends would drift towards a shop and we would scrape together what we had to get anything that wasn’t at home, penny sweets that I would pick at while my bag, pick and mix and I picked and would take time to choose my little sweets, the cola bottles, fried eggs, jelly bears, laces, I would put a sweet in my mouth as I chose, choosing was deliberate, with under fifty pence the sweets had to be chosen , one off sweet one banana flavour or pear could take away the moment, before you know you’re back in bed craving sugar and listing the ways that tomorrow will be different there will be money and the seat next to the boy on the bus who’s dad owns a sweetshop and has brown teeth and spits while he talks will be free and he’ll ask you to put your hand in the bag and pick a sweet, school was hustling to eat, to see who would or could share, the music, radio ears turned into antennas an insect waiting to hear a new sound; drums that weren’t real, notes played by those that couldn’t tell you the name.

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Its still there the church where they buried my grandma and I watched two minutes of a funeral on my phone before staring out the window of a train. The grushies happen less. The toys in cereal boxes have been replaced by links and QR codes. The taste and tradition of fried eggs and chips on Friday, coddle, barmbrack, cold sausage sandwiches and the holiday where you were born flavoured crisps exists.