Motherhood Monday Fiction Meme – All You Can Eat Ice-cream

It’s that time of the week again, (we’ll pretend for the moment it’s still Monday). Here’s my contribution to this week’s Motherhood Monday Fiction Meme, the prompt this week being

Describe something your main character won’t ever do again…and why.

Sorry for the Italian link again! I think I think about Italian food too much! 

All You Can Eat Ice-cream

Every evening when Molly Jones’ father walked her home from her grandmother’s, they would walk past Gennaro’s Pizzeria. As they approached the restaurant, a bright beacon amongst the grey dim lit terraced streets, Molly’s foot steps would slow and she would lag behind her father, desperate for as much time as she could grasp to peer through the foggy windows and smell the tomato and oregano scented air. Each time she would look hopefully at her father, as he would turn in the street and beckon her to hurry up, but each time she would get the same reply;

“Hurry child, your mother will have tea on the table.”

Whatever it was, waiting for her when she got home, it never tasted as good as Gennaro’s pizza smelt.

Then one particularly wintery night, Molly’s father was a little late picking Molly up from her grandmother’s. He eventually arrived, bustling through the door, brushing snowflakes from his hat, quickly making excuses to his scowling mother.

“Sorry, sorry. Molly, your mother has had to go to Treherbet; your Auntie Morag has slipped and fallen badly on the ice. It’s just you and me tonight kiddo.”

Molly’s father hurried her out of the door, throwing coat, gloves and hat on her as she went.

“Now watch your step!”

The pair gingerly followed their normal route towards home. Molly’s father hugging himself tightly in an effort to provide some warmth. Molly stamping her feet with the same hope. When they could see the light from Gennaro’s windows spilling out onto the street in the distance, Molly looked up at her father in her daily act of hope. Her father smiled

“Come on then”

Suddenly all the ice and snow in the world could not have stopped Molly reaching that restaurant and before they knew it, they were pushing open the jingling door, the warmth and smell hitting them in their faces, warming their chilled fingers. Gennaro himself appeared instantaneously.

“Come in, come in” he greeted them in his thick, authentic accent.

Menus appeared as if by magic in their hands as they were ushered towards a cosy table for two looking out onto the dark snowy street. Molly’s taste buds tingled just reading the menu and she found it hard to make up her mind but she eventually settled for a pizza with ham and peppers and a side plate of garlic bread.

The garlic bread arrived first, thick, oozing, buttery, pungent slices, shortly followed by a pizza so large it swallowed the plate. Molly’s knife bit through the smoke charred crust with a satisfying crisp crunch. Molly and her father ate in companionable silence, appreciating every mouthful. Slowly the plate beneath the pizza appeared, until eventually, there was a slim sliver rattling round the tomato smeared plate. Molly made herself eat it, even though she could feel her stomach groaning, a trip to the pizzeria was not an everyday experience.

When Molly and her father had emptied their plates and washed their pizza down with sodas, the jovial Gennaro appeared by their side again.

“You enjoy? Yes?”

The pair nodded appreciatively.

“And now for dessert yes?”

The first thought in Molly’s head was no, she couldn’t eat another thing, but then her eyes were always bigger than her stomach when her gaze fell upon the corner to which Gennaro was pointing with a dramatic flourish.

“All You Can Eat Ice-cream, yes?”

Molly’s gaze fell upon the little coloured glass dishes of sprinkles and garnishes upon the ice-cream counter, thick curls of chocolate, translucent tinted sugars and chopped up pistachios.

“Follow me young lady”

Molly followed, zombie like to the allure of sweetness. She pressed her nose up to the glass pane of the ice-cream counter, to gaze at the multicoloured assortments of ice-creams below. So many flavours, so many toppings, so many combinations. What should she try first?

Molly opted for a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of strawberry, crammed upon each other in their bowl. She wasn’t sure which sprinkle to chose, so she chose all of them, merrily piled on top of each other. She arrived back at the table, carefully clutching her precarious treasure.

The first mouth full was ecstasy, chocolate and vanilla mingling and melting together on her spoon, garnished with the finest sugar crystals. The second mouth full was bliss. The third mouth full was ‘this is ok, getting used to it now’. The fourth was ‘there’s still that much more to go?’ The fifth was ‘that pizza I ate was sooooo large’. The sixth was ‘I have to eat this, daddy will be cross’. The seventh was ‘where’s the toilet?’

Of funerals and hospital appointments and really really good blog stats

You may have noticed a rare absence from me in that I didn’t post yesterday. I was off up North to my father in laws funeral, which was a sad occasion in suitably befitting rain. I left the kids in London with my dad, when he arrived, Boy Lacer took one look at him and went “eeeek” in a very high pitched distressed tone which meant “eek, it’s not that strange man again is it”, he then crawled as fast as he could, following me to the kitchen where I was preparing their lunch in advance. However Grandad came bearing late birthday gifts, a toy Iggle Piggle and as far as Boy Lacer is concerned anyone bearing toy Iggle Piggles is actually a good thing, so he was happier after that. I left a detailed list of instructions, including how to get Boy Lacer to nap whilst Girl Lacer was at nursery, but dad decided not to upset Boy Lacer (I warned him he screamed) so he let him play and apparently he was as good as gold. After nursery they all went to McDonalds, which probably put Grandad on an even higher pedestal for Boy Lacer because anyone who takes him to McDonalds has to be a very very nice person. So when I arrived home I found Girl Lacer and Boy Lacer contently playing on the floor looking like everyone had had a nice day.

My day (other than the funeral) wasn’t too bad either, I travelled to the funeral and back by public transport and for once it behaved implecably all day, I’d get to a platform and there would be my train, even on the way back when I could have walked, there was a bus just pulling up at the bus stop, so I took that as a sign . I like travelling by train and tube, don’t do enough of it now I’m a mum, I actively miss commuting, it was a chance to read and listen to music and I like the drama of travelling through central London, all the people, you can feel the stories literally around you. Plus I managed to finish The Quiet American (see earlier post) and read some more of Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, which is really good, although I prefer Susan Hill’s creative writing course, where she has just written a particularly good post about making the reader do some of the work and not using too many adjectives, which I was worrying about (that I was using too little). Hill has recommended some more reading so now I’ve finished The Quiet American, I think I may try some Dickens in the form of David Copperfield, although I’ve just noticed on Amazon how long it is! Sorry anyway I’m really digressing, I enjoy travelling because it gives you a chance to read, listen to music and people watch. Thinking about music I’ve got some particularly good new(ish) albums on my MP3 player at the moment, my favourite is Newton Faulkner’s Handmade by Robots, which has quite a Jack Johnson vibe and Kanye West’s Graduation (see my music tastes are nothing but diverse).

Well after that long and rambling, flitting all over the place paragraphs, time to move on to today. Boy Lacer had a hospital appointment today with his consultant at Children’s Outpatients, last time he saw her was about January time. She was the one who started the whole ball rolling, did a lot of tests on him, found nothing wrong and then sent him on for a developmental check, which triggered the speech therapy and physio and which we’re still waiting for a follow up developmental check. Anyway this appointment today was principally about his chest which has been absolutely fine since going cow dairy free. The consultant said to carry on keeping him cow dairy free till next summer, when there won’t be as many respiratory bugs around and then try and reintroduce cow dairy slowly and see what happens. As far as the walking (or lack of it) is going, she thinks he’s making good progress and yes he probably has hyperextension but it shouldn’t hamper him too much, as for speech therapy’s communicating with others, she thought (as do I) that he was playing perfectly well with his sister (who was also there) and she’d seen him playing with another kid in the waiting room (and the screaming that resulted when I had to take him away for the appointment).

Finally, I checked my blog stats this lunch time and they actually made me swear in front of my children, I couldn’t help myself! My stats are normally running at a respectable 150 – 250 a day but yesterday it was 798! Today (early afternoon), they’re already at 516! And this is all for pretty much one thing, Nigella Lawson’s Hokey Pokey, which she showed on TV last night (and oh my god it looked good, as did the Rocky Road and the sesame noodle salad). Sorry guys, I don’t have the recipe, well I do, I have a copy of the Nigella Express book but it’d be breaking copyright if I copied it out here and I can’t find a link anywhere else to it, however I do actually really recommend the book, just for her cheddar cheese risotto and french doughnut toast alone, Cook Yourself Thin she isn’t! I definitely think I’ll be trying that Hokey Pokey though.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Warning: the following review contains spoilers.

I’ve just finished reading The Quiet American by Graham Greene. I’m following Susan Hill’s Creative Writing course and she recommended reading one of four Graham Greene books and I chose The Quiet American because I’d heard of the Michael Caine movie and it didn’t sound so ‘catholic’. It took quite a while for me to get into the book, it’s very ‘male’ and being set in the Vietnam War, not something I’m particularly interested in, however even near the beginning of the book where it wasn’t grabbing my interest too much, I still felt an emotional involvement with the main characters when Pyle announced to Fowler that he wanted Fowler’s girl Phuong, I wanted to reach into the pages literally to slap Pyle. As the book continued I got more and more into it, so by the end I was actively enjoying it (I’m still not sure if I’m going to read any more Greene though).

The introduction to the book, by Zadie Smith, states that she thinks it’s an unfortunate lack of imagination on Greene’s part that the character of Phuong is not well fleshed out. I’ve read this criticism / desire that this character was more well developed else where to. But I think Phuong has been given enough ‘flesh’ as necessary, the book is not about her, even if Fowler and Pyle are competing over her. To both Fowler and Pyle, Phuong is more an object than a person, to Fowler she is someone to stop him from being lonely, to Fowler she is something innocent to protect and help him fulfil his ambition to be a family man. Neither Fowler or Pyle really seemed to be bothered most of the time about what Phuong really thought, as long as she was something to protect or provide company.

I loved how so much of the story was developed just through the conversation between Fowler and Pyle, this aspect of the book in particular is something I hope to learn from in my career as a writer.

I love books that give us an ethical dilemma, would you do what the character thought he had to do sort of thing and The Quiet American gives one hell of an ethical dilemma, when the originally seemingly harmless (although girl stealing) Pyle is discovered to be involved in a number of bomb plots where innocent civilians are maimed and killed. Fowler finds out  after witnessing at first hand the effect of one of Pyle’s bombs and seeing amidst the carnage Pyle brush the causalities off as victims in the fight for democracy. Fowler discusses this with a Communist acquaintance, Mr. Heng, who tells him if he can just arrange for Pyle to be walking in a certain area at a certain area, he, Mr. Heng would be able to ‘discuss’ things with Pyle and ‘persuade’ him against any further action. Fowler knows that this probably means that Mr. Heng will kill Pyle and he is torn about setting up a dinner date with him at the restaurant instructed by Mr. Heng, knowing that if he does set up the dinner date, Pyle would almost certainly never make it to the dinner. Fowler questions his reasoning, is he really doing it because Pyle stole Phuong? Should he do it considering Pyle saved Fowler’s life? But at the end of the day Fowler realises that Pyle doesn’t see anything wrong about what he did with his bombs and there is only one way to stop him, as he couldn’t bring Pyle to the authorities. It raises the question would you do the same? To bring it into a more modern context, if you knew someone who was involved in say the 9/11 bombings and you knew he/she was going to do it again and this person thought their actions were ‘justifiable’ and there was no way you could bring them to the authorities, would you help another, almost equally morally dubious force get this person in the right place, at the right time, so that they could kill that person? I think, if I was absolutely certain and I was equally certain that the authorities couldn’t help, I’d probably help, I wouldn’t feel very good about it though.