Sugar Rush

I was telling Bhrian about my serious sugar consumption over the holiday period. He told me about his healthy diet.

Porridge and fruit for breakfast, lunch is a salad, lean meat, a drizzle of ranch dressing.

Sounds good. What about dinner?

Ah. Dinner. Well, I make about three dinners. Y'know, kids wanting different things.

(He has a lot of kids)

Then, I can't be bothered making myself anything, so I eat bits of everything that the kids are having. And - the leftovers, so maybe dinner is not so good.

I said,

Well. I've been eating industrial amounts of trans fats and sugar. I woke up the other night and my pulse was racing. I think I was having a panic attack.

Fats and sugar are the worst combination. So addictive.

I know. I read a short story once about a morbidly obese man who bought margarine and white sugar and mixed it into a paste and ate that. That makes me feel a tiny bit better about eating four mince pies today.

At this, Bert cuts in.

Four mince pies! You ate four!

I said,

I hope you never have to go to an AA meeting. I can just hear you. Some poor addict would be talking about how much they were drinking and you'd be like - you drink gin straight from the bottle at eight in the morning!

I went on,

They'd kick you out for being so judgy.

I'm not sure if the AA people would do that as I've never actually been to a meeting. Yet.

Then Bhrian told us about a short break he and the family took to Letterkenny after Christmas.

Did you all go? 

Not the eighteen-year-old. He stayed home. The morning we were leaving he was practically pushing us out the door.

Bhrian described the holiday and it sounded idyllic. Lots of long walks on windswept beaches. I said,

I hardly know Letterkenny apart from passing through. But Uncle Vincent used to live there. He worked in a confectionery factory and I remember him telling us that if we only knew what went into sweets we'd never let them pass our lips. I was dying to know the details so pressed him on it and it seems that the vats of sugary stuff were very attractive to all sorts of flying insects and that they'd often end up in the finished product. Didn't put me off sweets one iota.

Bhrian agreed.

Probably made them even tastier. 

Yea. Hygiene is bound to be greatly improved since the 1960s, no more wasps and flies in our chocolate caramels and now they're nowhere near as delicious.

Tomorrow I plan to have porridge and fruit for breakfast and I've already researched bean sprouting. I think there might be some mung beans at the back of the cupboard. They've only been there for about eight years but I'm sure they'll be fine.

The Wrong Jelly and Other Stories

The girls are here for a sleepover and earlier today Bert took them grocery shopping. We needed some special ingredients for a sweet making session and for pizzas. He came back in a rage,

That Fullans is the worst shop in the world! They had nothing we wanted, No pepperoni, no anchovies, no mozzarella, no dislocated (sic) coconut! I'm never going in there again and all the staff do is stand about the aisles gossiping to each other!

But he proved himself a hero. Went to another shop, the trusty old O'Neill's, and got everything on the list except he bought packet jelly instead of ready made in a plastic tub. Jelly wasn't on the list but Martha convinced him that it was an essential. That's all very well but if the grandfather then fails to make the jelly and if at bedtime all a child wants is some jelly then Houston We Have A Problem.

So Martha and I jumped in the van and drove to Cully and bought the right kind of jelly. She was wearing a striped onesie and I forgot my partial denture but, who cares, we were on a mission. On the way back we went the long way and listened to Keltic Storm's version of  Mairi's Wedding three times. I love that me and the girls are so uncool we are actually cool and I'm sad that sometime in the near future they'll be letting me know that saying cool is no longer cool or even a thing.
 

This is the recipe book we are using for the sweets. It belonged to their mother when she was only a little bit older than they are now although this wasn't the cover of Zoe's book. If it had been I believe it would have been thrown out long ago. Both Margaret Powell and her pupil look terrifying. The early seventies can still send shivers.

Sleepovers mean bedtime stories. Tonight we had Madeline, a great favourite of the girls and of mine. The books are a pleasure to read, short and bitter-sweet. Tonight's story was about the time Madeline had her appendix out and how all the other girls were so envious of  the attention she received.

After that it was stories from real life.

Who do you want the story to be about?

You!

What age do you want me to be? Forty?

No! A wee child.

OK. I'll tell you about my first day at school.

So I did. And I told them about Malachy's first day at school and how kind Mrs Magee was and how mean Miss O'Neill was and about the time George didn't do his homework and stood up and read an essay he was supposed to have written at home and stood there looking at two blank pages and told the story out of his head and how I admired his nerve and then Martin told Cassie on him and George got the ruler and how I lost respect for Martin for ever and ever. I explained how Mrs Magee was always Mrs because we respected her but how Cassie was called Cassie behind her back because we did not respect her because she was mean and cruel.

After that I tried to think up some stories about their Mum when she was a naughty little girl but I couldn't think of any because she was a rather good child. There is only one and as Martha said,

Don't tell us about the time that she cut out pictures from a book and glued them on the wall and said the dog did it. We've heard that one a million times!

They were freshly painted walls, though.

Never Forgotten

There are some things that just stick in the mind. One of mine is my great-uncle Father Joe's funeral, which I wasn't allowed to go to. Father Joe or, to give him his full title, the Ven. Archdeacon Joseph Byrne, was the Parish Priest of Larne. He was greatly loved by his family and by all who knew him. Father Joe was described as 'a man noted for his kindness, goodness and piety', and he was certainly very kind to us, his great-nieces and nephews.

On days off he'd drive down to Tannaghmore in his ancient, blue Morris car, do the rounds of the grown ups houses, then pile all us children into the car, probably about six of us and take us out for a 'run'. He drove slower than anyone I knew and always tooted his horn when he approached a bend in the road. There would be a white paper bag of sweets with pictures of fruit which he bought in Mrs Fletcher's shop on the Pipe Road. We'd get one or two sweeties and they were that hard they'd knock the teeth out of your head. These runs would often end up at Uncle Joe's house near Cookstown Junction.

Father Joe died in 1961 at the age of 77. I didn't get to go to the funeral. Mammy said I was too young. But cousin Joseph was going and he was two years and a month younger than me. But that was because he was called after Father Joe, Mammy said. This didn't mollify me. Cousin Joseph was going and I wanted to go too. Mammy stood firm. I stayed home.

Then, about a month later, we were given a copy of a photograph of little Joseph (barely six years old) standing at his great-uncle's grave looking suitably solemn and sad. I was raging with jealousy. I've never forgotten that feeling but, I'm glad to say, I never held it against young Joe. I blamed the grown ups.

Joe's gone himself now. Three years ago today and I miss him still. We all do.

Jelly Babies

Today I ate an entire bag of Jelly Babies and they were not even the good Bassett ones – just inferior Spar Jelly Babies. I am very ashamed. According to the bag that was 180g or 7 servings. According to the complicated table on the back of the packet I consumed 'food' that amounted to 635.4 calories, roughly one third of my daily recommended intake. I was warned that the sweeties might contain Peanuts, Nuts but I did not detect any as I scoffed those babies down. Naturally sugars were the main ingredient. Water was the second (healthy) then Beef Gelatine. Oh dear! I'm sure that Beef Gelatine is what the food industry gets when it boils up cattle hooves and other horny and grimmish bits. Not very yummy sounding. More cheeringly the Babies contain Vegetable Concentrates (Nettle and Spinach) but I don't think that compensated for the boiled skin and tendons.

Spar also informs us that they help locally, raising over a million pounds for local community projects. As there are approximately 12,300 Spar stores in 34 countries this amounts to just over £80 per store. I'm not impressed.

Finally the packet states that if the consumer is not entirely satisfied with the product then it can be returned to the point of purchase without her statutory rights being affected. I shall go back tomorrow and wave the empty packet at them and complain about being forced to eat cow's toenails mixed with sugar and then demand my pound coin back but I don't think they'll be overly impressed.

So no more Jelly Babies for me. Not even Bassett Babies.