Suprise gift was full of snap, crackle and pop
AS the days go by and turn into amorphous blobs of weeks and months, I feel myself struggling more and more every time I sit down to write this column. What do you write about when you don’t do anything or go anywhere?
I stare at the same four walls and hope, pray or beg for just a crumb of inspiration. Any kind of stimulation will do. But, as I enter the twelfth hour of staring at a blank document, something on Twitter catches my eye.
It’s a picture of a bowl. Not just any bowl – a branded Rice Krispies bowl. The very same one I had when I was a wee guy. I realise I haven’t thought about this bowl for years but all the memories are now coming flooding back.
My maw sent away for it without telling me, knowing how much I coveted it, I believe she cut out a token on the box and posted it to the company. Six weeks later, the bowl was mine. Bright blue plastic with the three wee elves or whatever they were moulded into the base. Snap, crackle and pop was written around the rim. It was class. I absolutely loved it.
As I christened my new vessel for the first time with a bowl of sugary cereal, I felt such a rush.
This truly was living in its purest and most joyous form. I scooped up the last few bits of Rice Krispy, tilted the bowl up to my mouth and began slurping down the milk. I still remember watching as the faces of the elves appeared through the milk like ghostly apparitions.
Just as suddenly as the bowl appeared in my life, it disappeared. Lost as me and my maw moved house. That was the last time I ever thought about it.
Seeing that picture of the bowl had me reminiscing about being five or six and eating cereal from it while watching cartoons on a Saturday morning in my jammies. I almost felt overwhelmed, my girlfriend even asked why I looked so emotional all of a sudden.
I then think to myself, what else have I forgot? What other strange things did I own that I’m going to see a picture of somewhere down the line and be reminded of how much of a weirdo I was as a wee guy? “Here,” a voice in my head says, “Mind you used tae collect wee dug ornaments?”
I remember the shelves in my childhood bedroom lined with scores of porcelain dugs. Deadeyed canines staring back at me.
I try to remember why on earth I started to collect ornamental dugs but no answer comes to me. I think I might have taken a fancy to one that looked a wee bit like my old dug, Lucky, while at a car boot sale with my granda.
This soon snowballed into going about charity shops once or twice a week so I could hunt for new ones.
Some may find this quite endearing, I think it’s absolutely wild that a wee boy was so into dug ornaments. Going out to play fitbaw with my pals then heading home to peruse over my secret collection of wally dugs.
Then there was the phase when the dugs were replaced almost overnight by hordes of wee goblins. It was as if I couldn’t sleep at night unless my shelves were full of glassy eyes staring at me.
On Valentine’s Day, my girlfriend surprised me with a present.
A wee box which I gleefully ripped open only for its contents to cause me to freeze on the spot.
Looking up at me from inside the box was the three Rice Krispies guys, glazed onto a blue bowl the exact same as the one I had saw earlier in the week, the same one I had as a wee.
I pictured my girlfriend, for a moment, in a hard hat and rummaging through the rubble of my old childhood home looking for the bowl which was left behind. “I found it on eBay,” she said nonchalantly. I could barely even form the words, “Thank you,” as I was so stunned to have the bowl back in my possession.
I think lockdown has provided a lot of people with a period of self-reflection, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing.
We might be spending our time looking back on good times with friends and family we can’t see at the moment.
Maybe also regretting things we said or did and thinking of ways to make amends when we’re allowed outside again.
It’s been nice looking back at my childhood and remembering how much a freak I was, but I need this lockdown to end as soon as possible before I start to implode with embarrassment.
ONE of the world’s largest evangelical legal organisations has backed a Glasgow priest’s bid to keep his church open during the coronavirus pandemic.
ADF International has pledged to support Canon Tom White in his court battle with the Scottish Government, as he seeks a judicial review to overturn restrictions on services during the lockdown.
Places of worship have been closed in Scotland since January 8, however in England they’re allowed to open if “it is safe to do so”.
Father White, from St Alphonsus in the Calton, said his church needed to be opened to support parishioners impacted by the pandemic: “I speak for many in the church when I say that it’s very important to keep people safe and well during this pandemic, but this can and should be done while also allowing people to fulfil their need to draw close to God and worship in community at the church.”
Ryan Christopher, director of ADF International in the UK, said it was backing the Canon’s efforts because the government had failed in its legal duty to “protect freedom of worship, including in public or in private, individually or in community with others”.
Separate to Canon White’s action, a number of other church leaders have challenged Scottish ministers over the restrictions.
Earlier this week, polling commissioned by the Humanist Society revealed that just 17% of people in Scotland wanted churches and mosques to be exempt from the latest coronavirus restrictions.
Chief executive Fraser Sutherland said: “There is no divine intervention at the doors of a church that will stop the spread of coronavirus.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday that reopening places of worship would be a priority.