Our local sweet shop is called "Edwards" but all the kids call it "Teds" so naturally I've become accustomed over the years to requests to go to Teds.
When Kieron's big sister was little, penny sweets were.....penny sweets. When Kieron's big brother was little, they were often 2 penny sweets. With Kieron they were 5p sweets. Pocket money meant a sugar-filled hour of gelatine and colourings and delightful stickiness.
When Kieron was younger, Jade sometimes took him to spend his pocket money and as Callum got older, he was occasionally entrusted with the responsibility of getting Kieron across the traffic lights...wait for the green man...and going to Teds.
Going into Teds is a cornucopia of deliciousness. Sweets are arranged in plastic tubs with tiny, child-size tongs to pick up the sweets and put into a bag. Kieron has this down to a fine art....pick up the tongs but stuff the sweets in the bag with your fingers, adding up as he goes along. Kieron's dinner lady works there sometimes and always asks him to save her a sweet and take it into school for her. And he does. Not just a little sweet either, but a 10p one.
Once Kieron was deemed trustworthy enough to go to the shop on his own, I followed him the first couple of times. He climbed on the wall alongside the library, jumping over stray shrubs that were in the way, before leaping off the wall and running up to the traffic lights. My heart in my mouth, I held back out of sight, watching him press the button and wait for the green man, before crossing to the middle of the road and repeating the task. OK, he was across safely. Now just a little side road, a railway bridge and another road to negotiate to reach his personal nirvana. and he did it.
Curiously enough, he turned round in the sweet shop to see me standing there with the excuse that I thought I would " pop out for some sweets for me too". "I'll get them mum...what do you want?".Then the walk back home, red and yellow rubbery snakes crammed into his mouth, discussing the finer things in life such as which sweet to eat next and would I like to try one.
After proving himself on the expedition, he was eventually allowed to go on his own without me following along like an extra from a cheap spy film, but I always put a piece of paper in Kieron's pocket with his name , address and phone number on it, in case there was an accident. It was my dread that one day there would be a knock on the door with someone standing there telling me that Kieron had been run over. Run over, died at home, no more sweets for us.
Odd isn't it. I trained my kids over and over again to cross the road. I knew they were all OK at it. It never, ever occurred to me that I'd lost one in such a way. I thought we were past that stage.
ReplyDeleteI miss buying sausages - Al would have lived on sausages if I'd let him.
If they'd known each other, he'd have happily given Kieron all of the sweets - but he'd have nicked a sausage off his plate. I think, despite the age gap, they'd have got on well.
I think so too. Kieron always got on well with Callum's friends although there is a 5 year age gap. Kieron would probably have given up all the sausages unless they were hot dogs! or as Kieron would call them: mechanically reclaimed meat...yuk!.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the thing is there were all these zillions of things we did to keep them safe, it's hard to believe they *can* be gone.
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