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June 30, 2006
Away with the pixies
On a Friday when I pick my daughter up from school, I usually take her a sweet treat, to celebrate the coming of the weekend because I’m generous like that. And so when I was out shopping (ugh!) today, I noticed something I haven’t come across for a long long time,
something I didn’t even know existed anymore.
Does anyone around here remember Parma Violets? And can someone tell me where they’ve been for the past twenty years or so. Anyway, no prizes for guessing what Littleone had for her treat today.
And so she comes running out of the classroom, ‘What have you got for me today?’ To whichof course I can’t help replying ‘Hello my dear, I’m fine, thank you for asking. How was your day?’ before handing her these Parma Violets and going on to explain that I used to munch them
when I was her age.
I thought they’d be like Candy Floss, one of those things you keep trying in adult life in the hope that it will taste like it did when you were six, but it never does, it just catches on the back of
your throat and makes you gag, but even so I couldn’t resist popping one on the end of my tongue before Littleone had even made up her mind whether she liked them or not.
One minute I was there, walking along the grimy park on the way home from school and the next minute I was swept away to Devon, I think. A little village in the middle of Dartmoor, or maybe Exmoor and there’s a shop. In my head it sells only pixies, everything pixie, little dishes with pixies on, pixie figurines and no doubt boxes of clotted cream fudge with pixies on the front. I don’t know if this is accurate or if my subconscious has made this up just because it
knows I bought a tiny bottle of perfume with a pixie on top. I remember this because I kept the bottle for years and even then if I untwisted the pixie with the little red hat and cheeky grin (did someone say 'tacky') the empty bottle would still reek of
violets, long after the perfume had run out.
Somewhere far away in the here and now, I’m vaguely aware that I have a sweet in my mouth and that this sweet is my time machine. If I bite and swallow the pixies will be gone, so I let it fizz and dissolve slowly on the end of my tongue.
I’m outside the shop now clutching my paper bag. There is a courtyard with a trickling fountain across the middle, benches scattered around the edge and it is warm, everybody is wearing shorts and t-shirts even though it is only May. I only know this now as when I was that age we only ever went to Devon in May half-term (no doubt because it was cheaper) but really I am too young to care what time of year it is. I’m away from home, I’ve not yet been abroad on holiday, in my naiveté, my youth and innocence, this is as foreign and as exotic as it gets. I unfold my paper bag and twist the little pixie and sniff the scent of the perfume, I don’t yet know that it is the scent of violets, I think that this is what real pixies must smell like. Mum slips a coin in my hand and I throw it deep into the rushing waters of the fountain.
Make a wish.
I can’t help it any longer. The sweet is dissolving and crumbling in my mouth and if I don’t swallow now, I’m going to start dribbling all over the place. One swallow and it’s gone. My mum has taken my hand and lead me away from the fountain, through the gate, to the other side.
I don’t know what exists the other side of the gate, I try to remember but it’s gone I’m back in Cambridge the here and now, the park, bringing my own daughter back from school, about to be flattened
by a bicycle coming up behind us.
Secretly I hope she won’t like them, that she’ll hand the Parma Violets back to me, asking for something else but before I know it, there’s only two left.
‘Can I have just one more?’ I ask. Reluctantly she hands it over, but you can never have it again the second, third, fourth is never the same. I want to be back with the pixies in Devon but really
I’m feeling a little silly now, I’m a fully grown woman, with a Parma Violet in my mouth, fiddling with the stiff lock on my door.
Still no comments? Feel free to email me instead.
Posted by purple elephant at June 30, 2006 06:01 PM