Recurring images in my writing
or why am I obsessed with ice-cream?
I’ve been working on a piece of flash fiction and it occurred to me how often ice-cream features in my writing. I began to wonder why – apart from the obvious fact of loving ice-cream!
Childhood memories
I think it must go back to my childhood growing up in the Northeast. My grandad was a gardener and in the 1960s and 70s he was the park superintendent in Heaton Park, just outside of Newcastle. He managed a team, responsible for maintaining the park, which at the time had a pavilion, bowling greens and many colourful flower beds all traditionally planted in a symmetry of spring bulbs and summer flowers.
My grandparents lived in the Park House, which felt like a mansion, but in reality was a moderate three bedroomed detached house. It had a rarely used front room kept for ‘best’; a kitchen with a walk in pantry; and a dining room with a fold leaf table, and an armchair and small sofa beside a coal fire. It was the room where most of the day-to-day living took place.
There was no central heating and in the winter a heavy curtain hung over the door to the hallway and the upstairs to keep out the cold draught. When my sister and I stayed with them we would get changed into our pyjamas by the fire and sprint up the stairs, diving under the sheets of a double bed pre-warmed by an electric blanket.
After my grandad retired, so did the house. As a family home anyway. I believe it’s now used as council offices for the park maintenance workers.
I visited last year and it was quite sad to see. Gone are the perfectly pruned privet hedges and immaculate lawns filled with those same colourful flower beds found in the park.
The park itself is also less ‘maintained’ than it once was. I’m all for natural spaces but it was a shame to see the bowling green is no longer used.
Story influences
But I have many happy memories from that time. One in particular was the regular family gathering for the traditional Sunday roast at the Park House.
On Heaton Park Road there was an Ice-cream parlour, called Graccos, and during the summer they sold ice-cream from a white, wooden kiosk in the park beside the pavilion.
Every Sunday my grandma would send my sister and I to the kiosk with a Pyrex bowl to be filled with the most glorious ice-cream. White and creamy and nothing like the whipped stuff you get piped from machines from certain ice-cream vans that shall remain nameless, and are, in my opinion, a poor substitute for the real thing!
But it’s not just the ice-cream which recurs in my writing. I’ve also realised that often there’s an association with a grandparent.
The Last Walk, which is published in Time and Skeins and O Sole Mio which you’ll find in Swan Song are two of my stories that allude to that special relationship between child and grandparent through ice-cream.
This is the flash fiction I’ve been working on which sparked the realisation of my fascination with ice-cream and the association with grandparents, which I thought I’d share with you here.
Monkey’s blood
Her hand, smooth like gum tree bark slips into the rough oak crevices of his.
‘I passed first time, Grandpa,’ she says.
Rosie feels the slightest squeeze of gnarled knuckles. He’d said she would.
She leans in to whisper in his ear over the beep, beep, beep of the monitor and the watchful eye of the nurse.
‘Tomorrow I’m going to drive you to the seaside like I promised. We’ll sit on Grandma’s bench and–’
His breathing stutters.
‘Yes, of course we can have an ice-cream,’ she says. ‘My treat, this time, and you can have as many toppings as you like.’
The following day, Rosie buys two ‘99s dipped in hundreds and thousands and dripping with strawberry sauce.
An old man sits alone on her grandmother’s bench. She offers one of the ice-creams to him.
‘I bought it for my grandpa,’ she says, ‘but he couldn’t come.’
The man takes it, the sweet, red sauce running onto his hand. He licks it and smiles.
‘Monkey’s blood,’ he says. ‘That’s my favourite.’
Rosie sits beside him. ‘It was my grandpa’s too,’ she says.
‘She’s right you know,’ he says, pointing to the brass plate screwed to the wooden bench. ‘Best seat in the bay.’
Tomorrow Rosie will get a new brass plate made to tell the world that Joyce and Bill loved to sit here, together, eat ice-cream, and watch the waves until the sun went down.
(In case you haven’t worked it out, monkey’s blood is northern slang for the strawberry sauce on ice-cream).
I had a special relationship with my grandparents. One filled with love, Sunday afternoon drives and picnics in the country, home-baked cakes and scones and of course, those Sunday Roasts followed by Graccos ice-cream.
Last year I became a grandparent for the first time, so now I’m starting a special relationship of my own. I can’t promise the roast dinners, or scones and cakes (if you remember from Getting Creative with Food cooking isn’t may favourite pursuit), but I can promise there will be lots of ice-cream.
Do you have any strong associations with a grandparent? Or a favourite flavour of ice-cream? Mine’s vanilla. Boring some may say, but when it was as good as Gracco’s you didn’t need anything added.
Until next time…
These memories are just so lovely, Lesley. I had a special relationship with my grandparents too, and hope to create my own should I ever have the privilege of becoming a grandparent. I love reading your flashes too. Your so productive!
Great post! I really like reading about your memories of your grandparents. What a wonderful experience to visit them there.
I miss the ice cream in the US sometimes. One of my favourite flavours is peppermint stick, which you can't get here. I liked it so much, when my grandparents walked us up to the ice cream counter by the petrol station across the river, I would always get my favourite ice cream with my favourite sauce: peppermint stick ice cream and butterscotch sauce. Ridiculous combination!