Bitter Sweet

This old fart was - for one, brief, bright-shining moment - a happy old fart indeed.

The attentive among you will remember that Yours Truly works a couple of nights a week at the local servo in order to make some sort of contribution to the household finances. And it was in this capacity that I recently made a discovery that temporarily warmed the cockles of this old, cold heart.

Maybe it was due to the fact that it was late at night, it was near the end of my shift, and I was dog tired. But having completed my shift duties, and with not a customer in sight, I was drifting listlessly up and down the aisles pretending to check that the stock was correctly arrayed on the shelves when suddenly I spotted them. There, in the midst of the confectionery were three relics from my childhood that I had never thought to see again.

A Chokito bar. A Polly Waffle. And a Peppermint Crisp.

Now, in case you're wondering how it is that my life could be so empty as to result in my going all gooey over three chocolate bars from my childhood, you have to understand a couple of things. The first is that, given the modest economic circumstances in which I grew up, in which 20 cents could by you a positively ginormous bag of mixed lollies (and how could it fail to do so, given most of them were priced at half a cent each), these chocolate bars were the creme-de-la-creme of confectionery, a legendary and only-to-be-longed-for indulgence which only the super-rich could afford. The second is that, as a child, a Chokito bar or a Polly Waffle was an adult treat (the fact that they were mostly consumed by teenagers was a moot point; to get your hands on one was to be grown up), and so had an added prestige beyond their actual worth.

Of course, once I actually did grow up (and, yes, I'm aware of the body of opinion out there that suggests this is an event yet to be accomplished), these things lost their allure; and gradually, the products themselves seemed to disappear from the shelves, fading into the golden afterglow of my childhood memories. So you can imagine my surprised delight when late on this particular night, I saw them sitting once again like golden eggs amid the monochrome glow of confectionery wrappers.

Naturally, I grabbed a fistful of each and, as soon as my shift was over, transported them home in a rapture of joy. And that, alas, is when the dream died and reality shot home with maliciously gleeful vengeance.

The first thing I noticed was the size. Or, should I say, the distinct lack thereof. Size may not matter for other things (at least, that's what I've heard; I wouldn't know, personally), but I can tell you, when it comes to a Polly Waffle or a Chokito bar, size is everything. While still in their wrappers, nothing seemed amiss. But once my trembling fingers had removed the product from their glittering foil sheaths, an involuntary gasp of disappointment escaped my quivering lips. The emaciated excuses for chocolate bars I now beheld were positively tiny. Okay, I could still see them with the naked eye - but that was the extent of their extent. What had once been massive logs of chocolate and nuts and waffle and nougat and caramel were reduced to pathetic imitations of their former selves. These weren't chocolate bars, they were chocolate fingers - and skinny ones, at that!

I was devastated.

But what really killed off any lingering hopes for the revival of a treasured childhood memory was the taste. Again, though, this was a concept encountered in the negative. By taste I mean the distinct absence thereof. Where was the smooth texture of chocolate? The sweet bite of the fluffy nougat? The unique, only-vaguely-describable-as-caramel swirl of the Chokito's filling? The crunch of the nuts? I don't think I've tasted anything more anodyne since the last time I walked into a certain well-known fast food chain that begins with "M" and ends in "cDonalds" - and that was years ago! Sheesh, it wasn't even like I was eating plastic - plastic would have tasted much better!

So next time you want to know why I'm so bitter and twisted, this is it. Not only have precious childhood memories disappeared from the world - they've been resuscitated into a hideous, zombie-like corpse. It's bad enough that the world was robbed of Polly Waffles and Chokito bars and Peppermint Crisps in the first place; that they've been adulterated into bland shadows of their former selves is a crime against humanity.

Well, my humanity, at any rate. And once I've finished bashing out this post, I'm going to email the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague - I want to know who's responsible for this travesty. And I want them to spend the rest of their lives in solitary confinement, up to their nose in the refuse of my ruined dreams. And then I want the punishment to get really harsh.

Bamboo stalks under the fingernails should do the trick. And then something seriously vicious: I'm going to force the perp to consume their own product.

Or would that be going to far?

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Childhood: a series of happy delusions. (Sydney Smith)