The Tottenham Snail

I live quite near this mural, on the side of a house on the Seven Sisters Road in Tottenham, north London. I don't know how long it has been there but it must be nearing thirty years. When I was younger, it was always a sign that we were on the home straight, just a few miles from home, and though perhaps being near it now shows just how little the distance is that I have flown from my nest, I find it reassuring every time I see it. I love that, give or take the odd graffiti tag, usually painted over quickly, this snail has lasted for so long. I love the incongruity of it, on a road that just leads people to places, and is never a destination in its own right. But most of all I love that it is a snail. The kind of creature that we say yuk to, that along with slugs and puppy dog tails makes up small boys, the scourge of gardeners, and yes, covered in slime. Yet there it is, proud, bright and still there, heralding to my daughter when we drive past it that we are nearly home.

Lovely crumbly yumminess

It's amazing how it's not just experiences, but senses, that define your childhood. The smells and sounds and tastes. I walked into the loo at the University where I work the other day and was hit by a powerful smell of bleach that took me straight back to the ladies loo in the Polytechnic my dad used to teach at, where we occasionally joined him for the day to play in his office while he saw students or did work. There must have been a higher education bulk buy in the early eighties for a particular kind of loo cleaner. Then there's the powder puff. I can't have seen one for twenty years but when I opened one in a shop the other day, unsure of what was in the box, the sweet smell of powder and the satiny feel of the puff made me feel all safe and young and, atishooo.

One of the senses that has stayed with me is the taste of a particular kind of cake they used to sell in the bakery on Orford Road in Walthamstow, which was on our walk home from primary school. It's still a bakery, though one selling sandwiches and coffee, rather than iced fingers, bath buns and split tins. For years I have thought about these cakes. I had tried describing them to people - crumbly, sweet, brushed with icing sugar, like a Viennese biscuit in cake form with solidified jam running through it - but no one could help.

Then I was flicking through a recipe book in Oxfam books the other day and found a picture that looked strikingly familiar. Turns out Viennese was a red herring because they're not Austrian at all. Rather they are called Swiss Tarts. And I made some, and they tasted just right.

(There are loads of recipes for these online - just search for Swiss Tart. They are butter heavy and sugar laden and consequently delicious.)

The greatest show on earth - and we'll be there

I have a glut of posts that begin 'When we were trying to conceive...' for which I apologise. Here is another.

When we were trying to conceive I often thought about the London Olympics, now just weeks away. I would work out how old my baby would be in July 2012, if we conceived in any given month, and whether they would be old enough to understand the magnitude of the event, to recognise athletes, to play with a toy medal, to wonder at the nature of a competition that includes swirling ribbons around in rhythmic gymnastics and so on.

Turns out we were a bit late for that. Our daughter will be 19 months when it starts. We got her a pay your age ticket for the hockey so she'll be there, but whether she'll be engaged (whether we'll be engaged - it is hockey after all) who knows.

But I am thrilled that she will experience the London Olympics, that we will get photographs of her at the Olympic Park and have some souvenirs in her toy box. Because I am not one of the naysayers who is cynical about the event. You only have to look at the Olympic Park and its magnificent buildings, and walk around the adjacent shopping centre, to think wow, this used to be Stratford, the kind of place you had to suffix with the words 'East London' less anyone think you meant 'upon Avon', and now it's Stratford, the kind of place you can just say by itself and it can hold its head up high and say yes, look at me with my velodrome and aquatic centre and stadium, my destination shopping centre and comfortable cinema and casino for those that way inclined. Look at all the jobs I have created in building and retail. Look at the feats I will host, the speed, the agility, the strength. Look at the tears and beads of sweat. Oh, I'm getting carried away... but you would too if you had grown up a stone's throw away, if you associated Stratford with the 69 bus, if your school theatre trips were to the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

I love that Stratford no longer hides away in East London, letting its 'cooler' neighbours of Mile End and Stepney take the limelight. Now Stratford proudly says 'I am here'. And my daughter, though she may not remember it, will be able to look back on London 2012 and say 'I was there'. I'm so pleased we managed to make her in time.

I took her to a supermarket

The baby and I popped to Tesco this morning for a picnic lunch and other essentials (hairbands, Easter eggs, crumpets) and, parking the car, I saw the above notice, saying "It's so much easier when you shop from home."

Now never mind that shopping online with Tesco is not easy, not if you factor in my last order having so many substitutions I sent back more than I kept and the two orders before that being cancelled on the day by the store leaving me with no food or nappies and, on one of those, no money, having taken the cash from my account despite not delivering the goods. Never mind that. Because even if the service had been at an acceptable level, it's sad if people are encouraged not to take their kids to the supermarket.

In my constant patter of chatter as we meander round the aisles, my daughter seated in the trolley, she is introduced to several basic concepts that she needs to know in life. She learns that she can't have everything she wants, that sometimes persistent nagging will get her some of what she wants, that things have a cost and budgets must be kept to, the difference between luxuries and essentials, that lists can be ignored but should always be made, and much more.

Once, when I was a a teenager, my mum played a game. Everything I asked for in the supermarket she said yes to and we came home laden with shampoos and hair mousses. It was a bit overwhelming, getting everything I asked for, but a wonderful memory. I may do the same to my daughter one day, a one off special treat. But how would it be a special treat if she hasn't first had years of having to keep more or less to a list, browse shelves for bargains, evaluate quality and not have every single thing that catches her eye as we go up and down the aisles?

I remember, I remember

I remember it so clearly. Sitting in the car outside a pub, the window open to give us some air, being brought lemonade and crisps to occupy us while our parents were inside. I can taste the lemonade, the strong distinctive taste of R Whites, the fake cheese and onion flavour of the crisps back when cheese and onion was green, salt and vinegar was blue and prawn cocktail was exotic. 

This is the memory of a million 1980 childhoods and I can transport myself there so easily, back into that memory. We were wearing bodywarmers before they were called gillets, our gloves were attached to our duffel coats with strings up each arm and across the back, my earmuffs had pandas on them. 

Except, except... this image might be true for everyone else who writes about them, but though I remember them so well I am pretty sure they are all false. My parents never went to pubs. If they did we wouldn't have been left outside in the car. For many years we didn't even have a car. I never had a duffel coat. My gloves always just got lost. 

I've been wondering about memories of childhood because it seems to me that so much of parenting is about creating memories, be it the perfect day at the zoo or the ideal birthday party, a wonderful summer holiday or a special treat trip. Yet we never really know which are the images that will stick, which will define a generation, and which will be true. 

For now though, even though everything we do no doubt has an impact on the baby's development and her understanding of the world, the memories we make each day are for me, be it a sleepy cuddle before bed or a morning of giggles and wonder at the world. And though I am a grown-up, I suspect these memories will be just as riddled with false realities and rewritten history as my memories of childhood, not least because I seem to have already forgotten the detail of events of even a few months ago, as evidenced by having no idea of the answer to questions from parents a few months behind me asking about sleep patterns and weaning.  

But though no doubt different from what really happened, the memories I am making now will be wonderfully glorious, of that I am sure, and some details will even be true. For I did have panda bear earmuffs. I did.