A Memory

I sat in the back of the car, and I watched as my mother-in-law slipped a sweet out of the bag. Something caught at my memory, and I frowned. I recognised the packaging - the red Bassett's logo, the green text... the way the wrapper curled around at the edges - even the sound the hard pastille made as it was unwrapped. I tilted my head, and I knew immediately what it would taste like, what the texture would feel like, pressed against the inside of my cheek - the raised dots rubbing against it, the sugar inside teased out, causing a kind of numbness. I took one, and as if in a half-remembered dream, I pulled the two ends gently, slid the hard pastille out of the crinkled wrapping.

I put the Sherbet Lemon in my mouth, and I remembered.

I was twelve, maybe thirteen, and I wrote for the school newspaper. We were a tiny prep school, barely 170 pupils, and so the scope of the articles wasn't particularly grand - an expose on the removal of chocolate splodge pudding here, an appeal for the older boys to be allowed to sit on chairs at assemblies there - hardly Watergate, but we got by. The newspaper was 10p, and I remember that we used to give away a sherbet lemon with each one - it was an early exposure to 'value-added' marketing. We never sold many newspapers - even fewer when I became editor, but we got by, and given that parents print-shop published the newspaper, there were never any costs to cover. What little money we made went to sponsor a young boy in Africa somewhere. His name was Issa, and he used to send us letters. I wish I knew what happened to him. The newspaper was short-lived, and didn't survive my leaving the school, but for a while, it was important. I hadn't thought of it in years - The Chorister News. I wish I still had a copy.

It was an unimportant memory, but it was a good one. Sometimes, that's all that matters.

Reflection

I was asked recently to tell someone some crazy things I've done. The result was sort of an edited highlights reel of my life. I took it, and added to it, and here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

running outside on the snow day wearing just a pair of very tight denim shorts; inventing a fake band and then being interviewed as six different people at the same time in order to convince people they exist; spending six days in the Scottish highlands with people I barely knew, surviving mostly on German sausage; going to Paris and inventing both a secret handshake and a song about said handshake; running around a park in a ninja mask and beating up girls; playing the wonderful game of 'Shouty-shouty'; coordinating a sixty person picnic, lying to people on long-distance transport, dining with the grandparents of famous people, pretending to be foreign, going for long walks at five in the morning through sculpture parks, embarrassing streakers with a floodlight, camping out in a outdoors shop, buying tiny jackets to prank people with on April Fool's Day, falling for a multitude of different girls, each of whom is completely wrong for me in their own little way, planning and hosting a cabaret evening for my school, and doing it so well that i was asked back the next year, even though i had left, performing in a play that starred my best friend and my sister, and was directed by my ex-girlfriend, discovering what time subway opens, getting caught sneaking into a hotel, having waterfights with buckets at two in the morning, playing volleyball, late-night five minute chats that go on for hours, platonic dates, planning not so platonic ones, trips to visit friends, constructing endless 'Top Five' lists, writing letters that never get sent, screaming into the night, crying on shoulders, sleepovers, spending endless hours on video-games, appearing in movies, exulting in past glories, discussing movies at the top of my voice, having a street-brawl with someone I just met, exchanging countless in-jokes, going to concerts, supporting friends in need, running to hand in an essay by the deadline, dancing, fishing for the first time, planning parties, having my heart broken, then realising it wasn't broken at all, just bruised, making new friends, losing old ones, making out, discussing girls, discussing boys, seeking, finding, exulting...living

I could tag everyone I shared one of these experiences with, but it would really be rather futile. Life is meaningless without people to spend it with.

I'm feeling rather poetic today.