Spira

The door closed. Blinds are up, the quiet of Sunday - outside there could be a few birds pecking or a cat on a shed roof watching birds, the two papers that are delivered have been taken from the inside doormat. Its the paper in his hands and after the grand prix warm up. The French press, the paper, the quiet of lapsed Catholics…

As Norman had his mothers voice strangling his own and choking him with anger, stuffed in his throat and ears, bad anger, bad and lonely, kick the empty coke can. Forced to life not my own, adopted or not, astronaut magnets and a marble that could have choked me, space men magnets, the kinder egg, cherry Coca Cola, sweetcorn and little butter at Captain America, lobsters in the tank and fresh flowers and the 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 with tickets and taxed tabacco and sugar. She’s coming to take you to a town where they make computers and milk chocolate, near the studio of Star Wars and Aliens. There I ate my first egg and cress on wheat bread and asked for a keyboard, asked for Nike with 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, in the centre of the village, was the church. The decorated building, the incense stench would cause me to faint during a summer wedding. We crashed weddings to get to the grushy fight, 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, better than 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 his basement apartment, I had a bed next to the television. We added mushrooms to tinned campbells soup. During winter while kicking through the leaves around Dartmouth Square I kicked up a note, 20 pounds and all the kinder eggs and almond mars bars and fizzy sweet cans swirled around my stomach mind, a party on my own, a party I didn’t 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, the solitude in a beef flavoured hula hoops, pickled onion flavoured space invaders, salted potato discos, I had to fit in. I had to go weekly shopping with 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 long and each week they didn’t notice the boy who ripped through boxes of cereal for the plastic toy. Toy companies put money into reaching fragile 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, I was one that reverted to getting what was advertised without my mother, the situation is selling to youth, youth uncouth and without a penny, you expect the boys and girls to not want what they have, they have jars of penguins and biscuit jars just for them, separate to the adults. Us, we grew with the adults and their tea, plain biscuits, Cornflakes, fruit cake, brack, toast for three meals, low fat milk, chocolates that we don’t want to eat, chocolates with liquor, jellies that had no chew, jellies of jam. The poor cupboards didn’t have 12 different packs of crisps, bottles of minerals, bars: spira, caramac, cabana, caffreys big time, the food was for the adults and what was wanted by me was in a corner shop. After dinner, 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 I picked my bag, they called it pic n mix and I picked and would take time, the cola bottles, fried eggs, jelly bears, laces, I would put a sweet in my mouth as I picked. Choosing was deliberate, with under fifty pence the sweets had to be chosen with care, one off sweet one banana flavour or pear could take away the moment, before you know you’re in bed craving sugar, listing the ways tomorrow will be different there will be money, 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 for hustling, taking bars out of other kids bags, lying to the teachers that i’d left lunch at home. I’d eaten it on first break.