Why I hate Parma Violets…

I woke up this morning convinced that I‘d been eating Parma violets and I suppose in a way I had. I’d been dreaming of eating them you see. The funny thing is I could still taste them after I’d woken up. I’d never eat Parma violets through choice - not even in my wildest dreams -  I can’t stand the taste of those horrible little lilac pill things; they taste like sucking on chalk that’s been soaked in old ladies perfume or worse.

The dream memory of the sickly, cloying, powdery taste really took me back though. Parma violets seemed to be just the thing to give my first love, crush, want-to-be girlfriend - a packet of Parma violets, so smelly sweet, and in return the hope of a peck - even a smile would have done.

Hilary Payne nodded her head from side to side and smiled in a very smiley way. It made her look nice. Of course it probably really meant that she was slightly simple. But she looked like Looby Lou - Andy Pandy’s playmate - wore ribbons, and for all I knew slept in a basket. Hilary sat opposite me in class at infant school and I never tired of watching her nodding her head from side to side in time to some internal rhythm, lost in some tune that I couldn’t hear. I could hear my teacher though as she shouted for me to stop gazing at Hilary and to pay attention to the board.

How embarrassing, the other boys ribbed me for months in the playground. Even so, I bought a packet of Parma violets and carried them in my pocket for weeks, waiting for the right moment to present them to her.

It never came, so eventually I eat them myself, forgot her, and moved on.