So, it’s been a week since Michael Jackson died; bare with me this does have a point. People will always talk about the man and the scandal that surrounded him in his later years, and I don’t want to get involved in speculation; I would prefer to remember the one thing that is proven fact about the man, and that is that he made great music.
I was sat in the smoking area of a bar called Heroes in Worcester, enjoying a cocktail called a chocolate monkey and chatting with a mate. The news of his death had started to filter through inside, and someone came out to share the news. This was met first with disbelief and then with the production of more internet-ready phones than I have ever seen in one place, outside of a Carphone Warehouse.
Frantic smokers sobered up enough to let their fingers navigate the impossibly small keyboards of said phones, desperately searching for something to corroborate the rumours and confirm it as fact. Google provided what they were looking for. The news was confirmed.
All I could think about was the fact that “Bad” had been the first album I had ever bought. It got played constantly, getting switched between my twin tape deck cassette player and a red brick of an old school walkman. It got played so frequently that both tape and walkman met an unfortunate end at the hands of Mr. Hammer after the latter chewed up the former, the tape being destroyed as an innocent victim of my tool based rescue attempt.
There, in the smoking area of a bar in Worcester, for a brief moment I was seven again and jumping off my bedroom furniture as I air-guitared my way through the album. I was lost in the memory for a while; at least until my friend pointed out that my glass was empty, my alcoholic chocolate milkshake drunk. That was the end of the first of two events that week that would cast me into a sea of nostalgia.
The second event occurred two days later in Newport. Having spent the previous three weekends on the lash in Worcester, a friend and I had decided that a road trip to crash at a mate’s house and get wrecked in another city sounded like a good idea.
We’d come up with a list of “funny” things to say when asked what we did, ranging from training dolphins to being the guy who put the hole in polo’s. It turned out that simply telling people that I was planning a tour of the UK and Ireland sampling and reviewing puddings, and writing a book of my exploits; was the perfect conversation starter.
It was whilst we were talking to a couple of young ladies outside a pub known as The Riv, that this realisation dawned. The topic had come up and I asked one of the girls what her favourite pudding was. I know, I’m smooth. Her answer sent me diving back into a sea of nostalgia. Sponge Pudding.
Again, I felt seven years old again and enjoying the memories of a much simpler time. A time when all there was to worry about was who would win in a fight between Mum-ra and Skeletor; a time when interaction with the opposite sex seldom amounted to more than pulling pigtails, or chasing them with bugs. When career aspirations included being a Ghostbuster and letters to Santa frequently asked for an unlicensed nuclear accelerator of your very own, because if your sister messes with your lego one more time you’ll fry her.
What? Just me….?
I don’t know why, but this reverie didn’t pass as quickly as it had two days earlier. Maybe it was the fact that I had consumed quite a lot of alcohol, or maybe it was the fact that Newport is not that far from a town called Caldicot; a town where I lived for three years as child, and where I would probably have had my first sponge pudding. Whatever the reasons, I was adrift.
I can remember the sponge puddings my mum used to make. Soft, yet filling sponge, soaked in golden syrup, best served hot with either custard or ice cream. I preferred it with ice cream, loving the way it would melt around the sponge and provide each spoonful with the stark contrast of hot and cold.
I found myself thinking of different types of sponge pudding. The chocolate sponge, the lemon sponge, and before I knew it the girls were gone and I was hungry. I was aware that I was walking and had been for a while. I was aware of my mates voices and laughter and was also vaguely, and soon to be painfully, aware of the pavement racing up to greet me.
That brought me off the waves and crashing back to reality. I decided there and then that I would be coming back to Newport at some point on the pudding tour, to seek out the best sponge pudding in the area. I also came to the conclusion that one can only be nostalgic about something once they’ve moved on from it. Nostalgia, to me, is reminiscing over happy memories, anything else is wallowing in, or clinging on to, the past.
At the moment there are some memories and some people that I can’t yet be nostalgic about, but I’m sure, and hopeful, that there will come a time when I will be able to.
That’s kind of been the point to this, and it’s also the point of the pudding tour. This tour is meant to be something that will help challenge my boundaries and push the limits of my comfort zone. It is about new people and new experiences. About giving me something to be nostalgic about thirty years from now when I sit down one day to tuck into a Sponge Pudding
It’s also about dessert.
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