Big rocks and small rocks...

There are many milestones over the course of a lifetime. Marriages, births, first loves, children, but not all milestones are big things, there are small milestones as well, the riding a bicycle, learning to whistle, the first day at school type of milestones. I guess you could call them big rocks and small rocks. But sometimes even the small rocks can seem pretty damned big to a child.

I think that the biggest milestone of my life to date has been learning to tie my own shoelaces. It was such a big rock at the time even though now it seems such a pebble now; like telling the time and knowing my left from my right. These days with Velcro, zips, and elastic tying your laces hardly seem to matter, but when I was a boy it was pretty much all laced shoes, except in summer when it was side-buckled sandals. Of course, before I went to school it was okay that I couldn’t tie a bow; my mum could always tie my laces for me. But once at school it became a nagging need, something, that if you couldn’t do, made you obviously and publicly stupid in the eyes of everyone who could.

Over and over, for hour after hour, I’d try to manipulate those laces into a bow only to manage knot after knot. I don’t know just how many times I almost got it, only to tangle and fail at the final crossing and pull of the lace. Driving me was the fear of my primary school teacher who had taught Victorian children and believed that if you could not tie your own laces then you should be stood in a corner and pointed at until you could.

All that pressure on a four year old made my fingers fumble, and of course the ‘help’ my father gave me didn’t help much.

I can’t remember exactly when it all slipped into place. But like most of these things I suddenly found myself, rather miraculously, with one perfectly tied lace and another which was passable even if it was only a half bow. After that, and with only a few minor setbacks, it was all plain sailing in the lace tying department. I must have been almost six.

These days I struggle to tie my shoelaces, but not because I can’t make a bow. These days it’s my back that has become the sticking point.

I’ll never forget the elation and relief I felt on the day I managed to tie my own laces for the fist time after music and movement in the school hall. It was one of those milestones that should mean very little, but at the time was the difference between shame and pride, stupidity and cleverness, ridicule and simply being left alone.

It didn’t end there though (well, it never does, does it?) Not far behind the tying of laces the challenge of the school tie was just a few short years away.

But that is another story.

A few fireworks…

What a week for fireworks, well actually what a couple of weeks. Just when did Bonfire Night start in October and go on until mid-November? Bonfire night with all its gunpowder, treason and plot is on the 5th of November, otherwise what is the point of having it?

Bonfire nights in my boyhood were such anticipated affairs. Everyone would build a bonfire in their back garden, stuff a motley selection of old clothes tied together with string to make a Guy, and save pocket money for weeks for a few fireworks.

Sometimes I’d plonk my guy in an old pushchair and go penny-for-the-Guying it. It never occurred to me just how wrong it was to burn an effigy of a Catholic, even a Catholic terrorist, despite Blue Peter telling the story with sketchy drawings every year.

Such an exciting event; if I were to rate special days back then Bonfire Night was only just behind Christmas, in front of my birthday, and Easter limped along miles behind like a damp squib. Even Halloween, which was nothing like the trick-or-treatfest children enjoy today, beat Easter by a crooked mile.

Bonfire night was so exciting - the flames, the smell of burning tyres and wood, volcanoes, Catherine wheels, baked potatoes, and of course the sparklers. How I loved sparklers.

This year, and for the first time in many, we set off some fireworks in my mum-in- law’s back garden. They were very good, not overly large, but sparkly and banging and whizzing and splattering. I didn’t feel the same thrill and excitement I did as a boy though – except when it came to the sparklers.

Last night holding my sparkler in hand, a big grin on my face, I was a boy again standing in a council house back garden, watching a burning heretic go up in smoke, and eating a baked potato.

Yes, I still love sparklers it seems.

Chocolate mice...

Chocolate mice, what’s that all about? Edibles don’t get much worse do they? A slightly deformed rodent made from greyish chocolate that actually tastes more of mouse than chocolate.

So, Chocolate Week is almost over, did you notice it or did it pass you by? It’s meant to be the nation’s favourite themed week and has been running for ten years. Well, who would have guessed it? Of course it’s mainly London focussed and really just an opportunity for chocolate companies to get together at Chocolate Show London to show off their latest chocolaty stuff. Chocolate Show London, what a grand name – mind you chocolate makers call themselves chocolatiers, so that’s hardly surprising.

Personally I don’t get the whole chocolate thing. I’m not a huge fan and my relationship with the dark brown substance is patchy. Of course, as a child I used to cram my face with a selection box or two at Christmas, but I never really enjoyed the chocolate experience. I think that it was the lack of chocolate for the rest of the year that made me do it, that and the fact that I was piggy greedy. The Christmas tree was always covered in cheap, hollow, chocolate baubles. Foil wrapped soldiers, shiny pine cones, even chocolate stockings which were tied to the branches with thin golden string. We weren’t allowed to eat them until after the Christmas tree needles had fallen all over the lino and by then they just tasted of Christmas tree and dust.

At Easter it was all about chocolate eggs, although again I never really got into the Easter chocolate thing. Easter was so boring – all crucifixion and hot cross bun - a non-event and a hollow Easter egg or two was never going to change that. This was before the big companies started filling their eggs with mini-sweets, so all you got inside your egg was air. Besides, I preferred Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, liquorice, and sherbet to Mars, Milky Ways, Bounties, and Chocolate Buttons.

Chocolate is a take it or leave it thing with me. I can go months without a piece, then crave a Turkish Delight or a square of Fruit and Nut. When I eat it I’m always disappointed with the taste; it never quite lives up to the smell and I don’t like the texture of chocolate unless it’s been in the fridge. I can’t stand hot drinking chocolate, chocolate spread, chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, or even chocolate flavoured beer; and as for white chocolate (which isn’t chocolate at all) it’s like eating milky powdered dirt despite the Milky Bars being on me.

No, I’m not a chocolate lover as you probably realise by now. I know that I’m in a minority, particularly among the ladies who scream about chocolate being gorgeous, or heaven, or even to die for, but in all honesty I don’t want to die for a Cadbury’s Cream Egg. In fact I can’t think of anything worse; it’s a gooey, sugary, chocolate coated mess that tastes nothing like an egg at all.

Scientists have proven that women prefer chocolate to being in love (which I can understand, most things are preferable to that) and that the chemical in chocolate produce a similar effect to smoking cannabis which I never really liked anyway. Perhaps that’s why I can take it or leave it.

It doesn’t explain why I’m so fat though.