The Realisation of a Life Long Dream

When I was a little girl I had a best friend, Kim. Kim's mother and my own had a very different view on children's diets. My lunchbox usually had some healthy home made biscuits or cake or some fruit. Kim's had Wagon Wheels. I love Wagon Wheels. This was reflected at Easter time too when my mother, knowing it was likely to be gone by lunch time, would usually gift me with one large or several small Easter eggs (a wise move, although we will never again speak of that year we got Carob Easter eggs instead of real chocolate). Kim would get significantly more than this most years and chocolate not being a novelty and she having some self control, many of her eggs would sit on top of a cupboard in plain view for days. WEEKS even. I still don't have that kind of self control. Every time I would go and visit my eyes would stray up to the eggs. In particular, The Humpty Dumpty Egg. It was full of SMARTIES. Willy Wonka himself could not have come up with a more fantastical idea. It was a chocolate egg and inside there was more chocolate covered with a crisp, colourful shell. It was, in effect, CHOCOLATE COVERED CHOCOLATE. Be still my beating heart. For years my eyes would stray to that Humpty Dumpty Egg. I am sure it exasperated her that I would sit for long periods of time gazing at The Egg instead of playing. I have vague memories of her asking her Mum to cover it up at one point so I would come and play. We moved away and Kim and I lost touch. I still remembered The Egg. Each year as Easter came around I would sternly tell myself not to be so silly and each year I would look on the supermarket shelves and see it looking back at me. The Humpty Dumpty Egg. But I refused to allow myself to be so, well, CHILDISH - and secretly was afraid Humpty couldn't live up to the hype of my childhood adoration. After I got married I mentioned it to Beloved and pointed it out on the shelf. He snorted and told me Easter Eggs are a little bit Pagan and not really his thing. Hopes of my getting Humpty Dumpty as a romantic gesture were kind of dashed. Fast Forward to this year. I was walking through our local supermarket and there on the shelf was Humpty, still full of smarties, still looking back at me. No longer white with a clown like grin and a box with a brick wall painted on the front. Humpty has had a face lift, he is purple and rides a skate board. But he couldn't fool me, I recognised him. The poetry of chocolate covered chocolate. There was a tag below him this week - PRICE REDUCED.

So this afternoon I snuck out of the house and ran accross. I BOUGHT my Humpty, all the time telling myself that it was silly and childish and after 26 years of wanting it, there was no way it could live up to the expectations built up around it.

I hid in my bedroom and at him, sharing small crumbs with Andrew to keep him quiet so the other children wouldn't find me out (who told him what chocolate is?).

I ate every bit. And. It. Was. GOOD.