Bittersweet: A Memoir. Angus Kennedy

      And so, we all made it, together, for another four years after the fire. My mother was suitably satisfied that we, including the dogs, were still enjoying the added bonus of being alive. I am sure that by this time she knew of my father’s illness, which must have started when I was nine, and which only made her drinking worse.

      Dinner at home was a fairly suicidal affair if you weren’t careful. It was an achievement to make it from six years old to nine in my house. In between rescuing the mail and having a candy fix, my new survival test involved fighting an enemy that was smaller than a raging inferno—the bacteria in my food, in what little eventually found its way to my plate. My mother didn’t have much time to cook, as she was busy trying to work, too.

      The problem with publishing is that there is never enough advertising to go around. It’s still the same today; selling magazine advertisements is a high-pressure job. I have sold millions of pounds’ worth, and it’s still just as hard convincing someone today to buy something they don’t really want as it was then. She was always going back to the phone or her homemade minibar and giving either a go, and they were both brilliant distractions from cooking.

      Meanwhile, I was always going hungry and my poor father was getting weaker by the month with his cancer. Often, cooking occurred only when my mother remembered to, and it was quite an education. Every now and then we enjoyed a truly great meal, as she really could cook once upon a time, but sadly the drink molded her into the very last person you would want to accept a dinner invite from.

      I used to have to do a kind of excavation job on my dinner plate to see what was waiting for me among chunks of raw garlic, orange or lemon peel, and hundreds of cloves or countless peppercorns (she always spilled the packet). Or worse still, I would be presented with reheated food that was several days or even weeks old, in which case it was not unusual to find myself sharing a plate with the occasional maggot or other insectoid dinner guests.

      My mother’s disastrous cooking techniques advanced considerably, especially in the evenings when she really could not even recognize the contents of the cooking pots she was tending to. She continued to add ingredients at random times, as she couldn’t remember how long had passed since she had started cooking, or if the gas burner was on at all.

      She liked curry, so you can imagine how hot some of those dishes became when she cooked with triple doses of chili powder. To this day, my brother and I like a hot curry. I also continue to check my food for bugs (cooked or alive) that might have taken a liking to my dinner or anything else: from stones or hundreds of peppercorns to household items like lids of ingredients jars or random items of cutlery that might have accidentally fallen into the cooking pot.

      Mum sometimes even forgot she was cooking at all, and would wobble straight past the burning pots to the end of the kitchen, where a convenient gin bottle was handy to help her through the day. She never forgot about that.

      It was a fine occasion to have the real meal deal that was both tasty and edible. Even if it was a good dish—because she could be a fabulous cook—sadly she would often fall asleep (well, pass out) while it cooked. I would rush downstairs through the smoke to find the spaghetti burned dry and retire to my bedroom to nibble on a Tunnock’s Teacake. I saved those for special no-dinner-from-Mum-this-time occasions.

      Sometimes I thought I had quite exceeded myself with an excellent idea to feed Peggy and Sheba with the dinners that were not, in my opinion, fit for us humans. But they would have none of it. The blasted dogs knew better. They’d run away from under the kitchen table when presented with a human’s plate, just in case I tried to feed them.

      I had the most intolerable stomach pains most days after school. They became so severe that while waiting at the bus stop on the way home from school, I would buy a warm, freshly baked loaf of bread from the baker, who was strategically positioned right next to the bus stop. I would then eat the whole thing outside the bakery while waiting for the Route 134 London double-decker, only to realize when the bus finally arrived that I had spent my bus fare.

      It was never really established what caused the pains, as I don’t recall seeing a doctor about it. I expect now, after having kids of my own, that it was threadworms. It was also a several-mile walk from London’s Camden Town to Muswell Hill, so I probably used up all my calories walking home.

      Needless to say, I would turn to my private candy store and fuel up on sugary carbohydrates. The large supply of free confectionery really was my savior, essential to keeping me alive during my school years. I lived off the stuff, which I kept in cardboard boxes locked in the cupboard in my room. On many occasions, it pretty much saved my life.

      I know what it’s like to be hungry, and nowadays I never leave anything on my plate and always save everything after the family meal.

      The best times were definitely the nights my mother returned home with so many sweets in the car that the rear bumper scraped along the road. Things were looking especially good when she managed to trade the tiny Renault 4 for a Ford Cortina XL with velour seats, a real cassette player, a cigarette lighter, and an armrest in the back, which seemed an absolute luxury. But most importantly, it had a bigger trunk, which meant one thing—a larger hoard of candies.

      Yes, an entire car jam-packed with sweets straight from the largest confectionery show in Europe. Possibly every kid’s dream? I knew that I would be able to stock up for weeks with such a hoard, and that it would keep me going right through the winter. My mother, as a journalist, would be handed plenty of free products at the trade show in Cologne, Germany, which I now visit every year myself.

      In fact, I have been attending this show since the age of twelve. It’s an enormous trade fair, where you can walk through fifteen halls the size of cricket pitches and pass a thousand trade stands displaying the world’s tastiest confectionery and bakery products. At the trade exhibition, you can eat and take home as much as you can carry. I go every year, and like my mother did before me, I come home with a car filled to the brim with the best French, Swiss, Belgian, Italian, and German chocolate on the market, although today I have five willing kids to help unload when I return. I also have a rather bashed up twelve-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser Invincible that can hold a welcome two thousand pounds, so I am very well-equipped for our candy cargo. I take magazines to the show and return with a carful of every possible treat you can imagine.

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