A STIR OF COCOA

I haven't seen my old Mum for 45 years. I've spent the vast majority of my life without her being around and now I'm approaching 60.

Its a weird feeling trying to remember her from so far back. My ability to recall my childhood and my youth is fading, certainly in any detail. There are just foggy snatches of recollections peppered with the inanimate objects that made up our lives back then.

This blog is an attempt to remember. Its probably to reconnect with my childhood. Dare I say it, its maybe even to reconnect with my Mum, who died when I was 15.

I've survived the loss but I wouldn't want it to happen to anyone else, which alas, it does all too often.

Occasionally I half-remember things, stirrings like undeveloped photos which just aren't clear anymore.

For instance this afternoon I made an instant hot chocolate drink.

I had a feeling that I drank them as a kid too.

More than that I saw the flicker of a brown box packet - maybe Rowntrees - and a white china cup and saucer. I think my Mum made me hot chocolate in a proper cup with a saucer.

But it wasn't like the Nesquik I've just quickly made. 

I sense that she warmed milk slowly in a saucepan on the stove and spooned in deep dark scoops of powder, stirring all the time with perhaps a wooden spoon.

It was cocoa I think. I think she called it cocoa too and not hot chocolate. 

The drink itself, swirling in the cup, was a rich gloss brown with a ring of froth on the top like a curl. She must have added sugar because I'm getting sweetness too.

I can almost hear the chink of the cup on the saucer as I sense drinking that delicious hot cocoa. It was quite scrumptious I think.

I may have to try to get a box packet of Rowntrees cocoa.

I have to try to re-create that drink I had 50 years ago!

Do you remember cocoa readers?