After my school day at the Junction Road County Junior school is over, I while away the long afternoons at home on my own. Mama and Papa are both working so I must look after myself (see post Home Alone). Papa is not far away at the nearby Warley Hospital looking after the old and the mad and sometimes both together, whilst Mama is at the Thermos factory a bit further away assembling thermos flasks day in and day out. Initially I am captivated by the newly discovered art of something called baking, but after a while the glamour and aura of baking subsides; I am becoming despondent from continuously turning out one gooey mess after another with no hint of a cake in sight. I am done with baking, it's time for a change of direction and I correspondingly direct my culinary skills to the top part of the cooker: I am going to try my hand at frying! In doing so, I will break Papa's most insistent rule; never to use the cooker when I am home alone. This blatant disobedience will bring with it serious consequences.
The cooker in our kitchen at 51 Crescent Road runs with gas, and is for a nine-year-old as myself easy to use. I have seen with Mama on the television soap operas such as Coronation Street and Crossroads how the English eat something in the mornings called The English Breakfast. On an enormous plate they pile an assortment of foods; fried sausages, fried bacon, fried eggs, beans and toast, all of which is then hearitly washed down with gallons of tea. The English Breakfast will now be the direction in which I develop my budding culinary skills. After carrying out an inventory of Mama's kitchen, I come to the conclusion that my English Breakfast will have to be a somewhat reduced version. The beans and toast is no problem, the larder has plenty of supplies for both. But the other components of the breakfast plate present me with a trickier challenge. Friday's is Mama's shopping day and on this Thursday afternoon as I peek into the fridge I am met with scant offerings: No eggs, no bacon, not much of anything really. But I do find a packet of sausages, the same type of sausages that Mama fed us as paté spread on toast when we were newly-arrived in Brentwood not so long ago (see post Toast And Television). Now we all know better that the sausages are raw and must be fried before consuming.
I now have all the ingredients I need to create my own version of The English Breakfast; fried sausages with toast and beans, and my mind races with excitement at the thought of the mouth-watering dish which I will turn out within the next few minutes. Rushing to the cooker with sausages in hand, I extract from within the oven a frying pan to begin the task at hand. Even though Mama sporadically uses the oven for heating food, it's still the most logical place in our family to store pots and pan (see post Home Alone), and after placing the pan on top of the cooker I fill it with oil and then turn on the gas supply. I have seen how Mama waits for the oil to be hot enough so that she can begin frying, so this is also what I do and once the oil begins to spit and fizzle I throw in the entire pack of sausages. But the entire packet of sausages overwhelms the frying pan, and after a few minutes I am having difficulties turning them all in a timely fashion so that they will not burn. My arm is getting tired from reaching up to turn over the sausages, so I push a chair alongside the cooker and step on it so that my arm will now be at cooker level. But as I do so, I momentarily lean into the frying pan and in an instant it topples over, cascading along with it the entire scorching contents over my right leg.
My culinary excitement is short-lived and instantly forgotten. The painful sensation of burning oil still frying on my leg is nothing compared to the distress traversing my mind as I comprehend with horror that Papa will now discover that I expressly disobeyed his most important command and used the cooker in his absence. What will I do? of course I will have to keep this a secret, but how can I do this with a leg that is now covered with a throbbing red patch and which is slowly giving way to an enormous burn blister? This mess is all my own doing, I should have obeyed Papa and not touched the cooker. A wave of distress cascades over me and I collapse on the kitchen floor in a crumpled sobbing heap; weeping for my burnt leg, weeping for the disappointment Papa will feel when he discovers I have disobeyed him, but most of all weeping because there is no-one here for me at this difficult moment and I must comfort myself.
The valley of tears eventually subsides and clarity once again repossesses me. At all costs I must keep from Papa what I have done and set about destroying evidence of the events that have just unfolded; when he comes home he must see no sign that I ever used the entire appliance. I throw away the sausages, clean the cooker, wash the frying pan and return it to its home inside the oven. Lastly, I take a fork and burst the clear blister that has formed over the burn on my leg. When Mama and Papa return home from work, I make no mention of the incident and keep my still-throbbing hot leg well out of sight covered with a layer of tights. Several days have now passed and I comprehend that soon I can no longer hide the burn; the leg feels terribly hot and the wound is beginning to throb incessantly with pain. On top of that I am continuously having to sneak away so that I can pierce yet another blister with a yet another fork. When I eventually own up to what has happened and remove the tights to show Mama and Papa my right leg, they are both horrified. By now the burn is an ugly red welt covered with a thin layer of white oozing pus. Mama tells Papa that I must be taken to the doctors right way.
The doctor is very serious when he seems me at his surgery with Papa that same day. He tells Papa that the wound is infected and that it will take a long time to heal. On top of that it will cause permanent scarring. Why was this child not brought in straight way? Papa falls unusually silent and I say nothing. I am too ashamed to tell the Doctor that I used the cooker against Papa's express wishes. Even though the Doctor is a kind man and tries to be as gentle as possible, I wince with pain as the white oozing substance is meticulously scraped away. After the wound has been cleaned, it is covered with a cooling spray and finally covered with a clean layer of thin gauze material. Papa is given instructions on the daily care of the wound; the bandage must be changed regularly, and the disinfecting spray applied with even more frequency. This will all help to combat the infection which has set in and I am to return to the surgery regularly to show the Doctor how the wound is healing. At home I tell Papa that I am sorry for disobeying him and causing all this trouble. Papa says nothing, I know that he is annoyed with me for disobeying his orders just as the doctor was annoyed with him for not bringing me to the surgery earlier. But Papa cannot really say anything, because deep down he understands that a nine-year-old should be frying sausages after school with her Mama and not alone.
I am still alone after school, and now really understand that I may never, ever use the gas cooker without supervision. The scar which is slowly beginning to form on my leg will serve as a reminder of this for the rest of my life. Alongside the Mars Bar and packet of salt and vinegar crisps that Mama regularly leaves me for my after-school snack, I now also find a delicious cream cake and I am in ecstasy as I savour this new culinary delight. I also never knew that such a delicious thing existed. My leg still aches from the burn, but the cream cake goes a long way to mitigate the pain. Every now and then I still venture out to the back garden to check on Papa's rabbits, but they are no longer the cute bunnies from a while back so no longer enthral me in the same way. However, our next-door-neighbour, Mrs McCabe's enthusiasm seems to not have waned in the slightest. She continues to coo over them like little children whenever she comes to the back garden and pokes her head over the fence (see post Hot Pants). I conclude that this must be a very English characteristic which I do not share in any way. Personally, I would rather any day sit indoors and watch television surrounded by a sea of multiple Mars Bars, salt and vinegar crisps and now heavenly cream cakes, than hold a rabbit in my lap. But then I am not Mrs McCabe.
On weekend mornings, Sis and I still run to Mama’s bed where we all cuddle up to one another for warmth, but I must be careful with the burn on my leg which is beginning to heal over nicely but still tender. Now I will have a scar to go with Mama's own and when we are old we can both tell wondrous stories about how they came about. But for now, they are things we would rather not talk about. The distressing events surrounding both are things that we would prefer to forget (see post Girl With Television).
To be continued...
Next post: 2nd August : Cadbury's Dairy Milk
Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.
