Childhood chocolate

Funerals are time of reflection, respect, sadness and celebration of a hopefully full life.
This blog is concentrating on the reflection element, those places your mind takes you to when you are thinking about the times you’ve spent with the recently departed.
I’d known “Auntie” Ifigenia or Fiona all my life, the latter name chosen to make it simpler for non-Greeks to pronounce. She was part of the Cypriot generation who came to North London to work in the 1950s and 60s.
Every Saturday, she’d do her weekly shop and then pop into our house for our coffee. As a small kid I really looked forward to her visits. This was the one day of the week I could eat chocolate. It was a kit-kat, a two finger kit-kat. Without fail, she’d bring it to me, I’d politely say thankyou and then go and hide in some corner, where I would savour every bite, I remembered the feeling of emptiness and disappointment the times she couldn’t make it.
It’s strange to think that everything is a commodity now, so accessible. Yet chocolate was a luxury, is a luxury. For working class families in the seventies it wasn’t something that was easily accessible or necessarily affordable. I used to think things like “When I grow up… I’ll eat crisps and chocolate every day” it seemed decadent and regal to me, a real step up from where I was. (as well as wanting to be an astronaut – a chocolate/crisps eating one clearly).
It’s only a small, funny little memory. But it seemed important to capture it. A way of saying thank you to a lovely lady.