“Exploring life through fiction, together.”

Every time I see salty licorice in a shop, I buy it. Especially if it’s in rounds that I can dissolve on my tongue, rolling from one side to the other to eke out every morsel of the sweet and salty goodness.

Fiction Bite - Better Out Than In

I can’t stop crying in the supermarket. Every goddamn time I walk past the baked beans, I end up in a gibbering wreck on the grimy lino. Then customer assistants come and say they’re trying to help while actually trying to stop me from making a scene. Which I carry on doing, though not by choice.

Stupid thing was, Greg hated baked beans.

But now he’s gone. Dead. Lying in a godforsaken hole in the worm filled ground. Heart attack.

—

Not even the family knows, but he died on the loo. And I left him there all evening, head slumped against the sink, trousers around his ankles. Dead. I thought he was having a soak and had taken his hearing aids out. Only forced my way in because I needed a wee.

And I couldn’t shift him, not the fat lump he was by then. That had to wait for the paramedics. Poor buggers. They left his trousers on the floor. Didn’t seem worth it, I guess.

They said it happens a lot. Blokes with a weak heart sit on the sofa all day, then sit on the can and push with all their might. Often they go poop. Sometimes they go pop.

—

And it’s only the supermarket left. I don’t cry when I see his empty side of the bed, or his toothbrush still in the bathroom.

But in Aisle 15, I see the stupid cans, and the playground rhyme loops round my head.

And I start to cry

Beans, beans,

Falling to the ground

good for your heart.

In that dark place

The more you eat

Where grief meets hilarity.

The more you fart

Quote of the Week

“Everything goes away, Jack Sawyer, like the moon. Everything comes back, like the moon.”

― Stephen King, The Talisman 

Book of the month

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Final Words

My dad would always bring a box back from his trips to Iceland. Sometimes he’d be gone a month, and he’d return to the flavours of licorice. Decade’s later, it still feels homely and foreign, adventurous and safe.

So every time I see some, I buy it. Luckily for my waistline, I don’t see it all that often.

What are your memory linked foods? What’s the story behind them? Would you be willing to hit reply? It’d make my day to hear from you.

With Love,

Josiah

If you enjoy these emails, would you share them with a friend? They can subscribe here.