After a while, Mama is no longer working at the Thermos factory assembling flasks day in and day out. Papa has managed to get Mama a job at the nearby Warley Psychiatric and Geriatric Hospital where he is also working (see post Hot Pants). Just like Papa, she too will now be working there as a Nursing Assistant looking after the old, the mad and sometimes even both together. Sis is still not big enough to go to school, so Mama takes her out of the day-care centre near to the Thermos factory and puts her with a local lady who looks after children called a childminder. Mama explains to me that a childminder is what a Mama must use when she works and her own Mama is not around to help look after the children. I am not particularly enamoured with this explanation; contemplating the child care arrangements of a four-year-old baby sister is not particularly high on the list of priorities for any nine-year-old including myself.
Today is Friday, and if it falls on a day when Mama is not working at Warley Hospital, she will do the weekly food shop at the nearby Co-op supermarket located just at end of our street on Crescent Rd. Whenever possible, I love to accompany Mama on her weekly shop. We are now on a half-term school holiday, so today is such a day and as I walk down the shopping aisles alongside Mama’s shopping trolley with Sis tucked away inside, I happily toss into the cart all the English cakes that catch my eye. My cooking attempts have so far proved futile, I am still frustrated at my inability to turn out a decent cake (see post Home Alone ), so I reason to myself that if I am unable to bake them, I may as well purchase them. And childishly ignorant of the cost this will incur, into the shopping cart they all pile:
Battenberg cakes, Lemon tarts, Mr Kipling’s French fancies, iced tarts. After a while, I have amassed a tidy supply of cakes to keep me busy for the following week and Mama’s shopping trolley is piled higher than ever, a lot of it with goods introduced by me. On these Fridays that I am not at school, Mama’s food shopping bill is noticeably higher, but she says nothing. I think that she is happy to see me so excited over simple things such as English cakes. Mama does care much for cakes, but she is impartial to chocolate and her own special treat on these Friday morning shopping expeditions is a small bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, or to be more specific a Fruit and Nut chocolate bar.
After we return home from our supermarket adventure and unpack all our purchases, Mama takes the Cadbury's fruit and Nut chocolate bar and puts it away in the top drawer of the kitchen cupboard in-between the larder and fridge. There the chocolate bar will solemnly reside awaiting Mama until The Cleaning Day has come and gone. On this day, Mama will tidy the house from top to bottom, after which she will sit at the kitchen table and savour her delicious chocolate bar along with a freshly brewed English cup of tea, all the whilst contemplating the cleanliness and order around her. Mama is clearly becoming very English and already understanding the value of The Tea Break (see post Watching The English Part II). Unfortunately, every now and then Mama is unable to partake of this important post-cleaning ritual because I have got to the chocolate bar first.
As well as English cakes, I am also into English chocolate big time, and even though Cadbury's does not attain the level of the treasured Mars Bars (see post Home Alone), from time to time I cannot resist the temptation of Mama's chocolate bar seductively gleaming at me from the kitchen drawer. If it could talk it would shout out to me, Eat me! which I sometimes do. This leaves Mama with a gleaming empty wrapper the next time she opens the drawer to collect her reward after a hard morning of cleaning with cup of tea in hand. Mama is understandably irritated and tells me that if I must finish off the chocolate bar before her, I am to do the decent thing and to also to discard of the wrapper. The audacity of being met with an empty chocolate wrapper surrounded by the odd chocolate crumbs smacks of outright impunity and is too much, even for a patient and understanding Mama as she is.
Unlike Mama and I, Papa is neither into cakes nor chocolate, rather he likes his dinners and along with it if possible, large quantities of meat. I have already got into big-time trouble frying sausages for the ubiquitous English Breakfast, which resulted in nothing more than a serious burn on my leg (see post English Breakfast). Papa now goes one step further and creates his own culinary disaster. In doing so he will earn himself the eternal contempt of our English neighbour.
To be continued...
Next post: 6th September: Farewell Rabbits
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.
