Porridge

I'm currently enjoying a bowl of porridge, being no masochist, it's been sprinkled with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar rather than the more edgy alternative of salt. Porridge is another dish that reminds me of childhood, when we were little we often had it for breakfast, it was my brother's favourite meal. It reminds me of cold winds and kite flying and using the old sofa as a climbing frame and trampoline.



A lot of my childhood memories from Scotland are of the winter, darkness and cold outside, warmth indoors and the black and white tellies. I remember envying the bigger girls who had platforms and flares, now I'm deeply glad my mum said no. I think the cliché is "We were poor but 'appy", well we weren't actually dirt poor we lived in a biggish house, (probably where I got my love of high ceilings) but the mortgage was at the edge if not slightly beyond what could be afforded thanks to the oil crisis. But we were certainly happy and very loved.

I suppose everyone thinks that their childhood is "normal" until they talk to others, one of my old bosses used to cheerfully tell the office stories of her childhood that would leave the rest of us dumbfounded at the casual, thoughtless cruelty of her parents towards her and her sister. She didn't seem to realise that their behaviour as she described it was sometimes beyond the boundaries of what was acceptable even then, let alone now, she saw it as normal for her childhood.

It's only as an adult that I've begun to truly appreciate how great being loved and cherished is.