Even at my young age I was suspicious of the easter confectioners.
Even while feeling the excitement rise, breaking into the thin cardboard casing
and unwrapping the fragile patchwork of chocolate,
even as I found the seam and tried and failed to make a clean break
even at that first crack, in my child-like cynicism I felt the disappointment
of the hollowness of an easter egg.
The half shell cradled the fallen fragments,
allowing me to collect every flake with a wet finger,
but still I felt cheated, more so as my mother insisted
that we save the rest til later,
her words somehow conspiring
with the glass and a half chocolate makers,
seeking to dress up the thin, brittle shell
to appear more than its fragile inadequacy.
Then grandad came
with a two pound purple brick of a bar,
fresh from his fridge,
and he challenge us to a bizarre dressing up feast
where we'd attack the mountainous chocolate
armed with a knife and fork, hampered by hat, scarf and mittens,
gambling against the next throw of the dice, against racing siblings,
to hatchet chunks from the heavy tablet
and shovel as many broken shards into our mouths
before, at the roll of a six, the woollen regalia was wrenched from us,
leaving us with only the prospect
of our empty shell of Easter disappointment.
Happy Easter.
Childhood memories from 1960s London
