Toasty

Mmmmmm

I just ate six slices of Fruit Toast. With lashing, lashing, lashings of melted salty butter.  So good.

Fruit toast reminds me of Sundays.

I remember when I used to sleep over at Lissy’s on a Saturday night, we would have a whole Winter Saturday at Willi Lacrosse Club.  We’d watch little bits of games I suppose, but the day was really about exploring.  It felt like we were allowed to do whatever we wanted.  Climb the trees lining the Ferron (they’re probably fenced off now), go and tease the wogs playing bocce (they’re called Italians now), do a death-run past the top of the cobbled naughty-boys lane (it has million dollar houses flanking it now)… We had lollies and chips, and red-lemonade and Four ‘n’ Twenty pies for dinner.  Some weird kid would always get mussels in a jar from the Fish and Chip shop.

Once it got dark and the lacrosse was over, the parents would move into the warmth of the clubrooms that smelt of liniment and fusty beer.  It would be noisy and happy and a couple of blokes would start singing “I am the music ma-an, I come from down your way,”  and we would go outside to play in the crisp night.  Some Dad would turn on the lights to the box-lacrosse court, and we would play British Bulldogs until someone would break a bone, or almost break a bone, and we would get called back inside.

I was always allowed to sleep over at Lissy’s.

We would wake up to the sound of the guns going off at the Rifle Range, (there’s a whole housing estate there now), and we would imagine the shots were firing out the beat of the opening bars of Blue Monday.  Our parents didn’t know who New Order were, so we knew we were cool.

We would laze in bed, and Lissy’s parents would bring us fruit toast.  Not the thick slabs, like dry sponges, that shops seem to favour nowadays, but lovely thin slices of Tip Top Raisin Bread, lightly toasted, with Western Star on top.  The butter would go on like cheese, then melt to a delicious golden liquid. Our chins would be slick with it.  We would keep calling for more toast, more toast, until Lissy’s brother would come in and tell us we’d get fat if we didn’t stop, and we’d giggle underneath our quilts because we’d knew never get fat.

We would lie on our backs and Lissy would make up songs.  She would write new ones, or invent better verses for songs we already knew; Kids In America, or Don’t You Want Me? or The Power of Love, but with surfing lyrics.  We didn’t surf yet, but we thought we might soon, so it was important to have the songs ready.  Lissy always had a plan, an idea, something fresh to think about.  And I would lie there and listen, or fall back asleep, or read Sweet Valley High books.

I suppose we eventually got up out of bed, but nobody ever made us.  We didn’t have to go anywhere, be anywhere.  It was Sunday.  And Sundays were warm, toasty.

Do you have a food memory?

Do Rifle Ranges still exist?