Sam Teddy Sugar Lump

The sheer luck of a happy childhood can’t be underestimated. You can dance your way on to the dance floor of life.

 

I was a lucky, happy kid. I want to write about growing up, but I don’t know where to start. Then I thought about objects, as markers of time and place. I thought about Sam Teddy Sugar Lump.

 

Even now, I love the rhythm of it. We stood in the back garden, my sister, Claire, and I, chanting in sing-song, Sam Teddy Sugar Lump!  Sam Teddy Sugar Lump!

 

On the other side of the wire-diamond fence, a huge Alsatian dog came bounding up, in a frenzy of barking. We clapped and danced like Rumpelstiltskin.

 

Sam Teddy Sugar Lump was the name we gave him, and he could bark a storm and wag his brush of a tail. Who knew if he was piqued or delighted?  We were safe, luxuriously safe, on our side of the fence. We presumed he liked us. 

 

A child who presumes they are liked, is a lucky child. They have no evidence to the contrary. 

 

Aged 7, I was walking home from school (in a civil war, in Belfast!) and I got lost in a different housing estate. Two older girls speculated I must have been a ‘feckin fielian’. 

 

I had been casually identified as a rare species of butterfly and was generally unperturbed.  Later, I asked my mum what a ‘fielian’ was. She recounted the story to my aunts and uncles, with much head shaking and general knowing. 

 

*

 

In our small kitchen, with buttercup wallpaper, my pregnant ‘Mammy’ was rolling pastry. I asked her, how the baby got inside her tummy. 

 

She placed her words carefully; a story about, ‘the man putting a seed in the lady’.  I had a clear vision of an apple pip being carefully positioned into a belly button.

 

But, when did Daddy put the seed in? I asked. 

 

Eh, one day when you were away at Colin Patterson’s house, she replied. Nice one. 

 

It seemed odd to think of such clandestine ceremony, when I was digging for treasure at the back of Colin Patterson’s garage, or practising ‘Commado runs’ (your feet have to hit your bum!) or listening to Rolf Harris sing Two Little Boys in Colin Patterson’s back room, my bare legs imprinted by the wicker stool. Look at us!

 

These were the ways we passed our days. In 1972, Mark Spitz was a swimmer who won 9 gold medals at the Olympics. We lined up on a knee-high wall, taking turns to shout ‘Mark Spitz!’ and make a spitting sound. We threw our bodies through the air, diving into the ‘swimming pool’ of grass, below. 

 

Back then, everything was a soft landing. 

 

We tried to catch bees in jam jars at the Fuscia hedge. We knocked at back doors, and once, when neighbours were out, we entered the kitchen and stood on a chair to reach the biscuit tin.  We took a biscuit each, thrilled at our audacity. My mum made us go back to apologise. 

 

No wonder then, I still remember, ‘the Judas ice-cream.’ 

 

My mum, nee Madeline McGuckin (yes), insisted on, ‘no eating too close to tea time’ (i.e. dinner time). I heard the ice cream van, as Mammy juggled with saucepans and fried sausages in the small kitchen. 

 

I ran to ‘Daddy’ in the ‘front’ room. He was reading on the leather sofa, in brown slacks, George Best hair, and a white cotton shirt. I asked for 2pence for an ice cream. He rummaged in his pocket, and dropped a copper coin in my palm. It was that easy.

 

One lick of the ice cream, was all I could take, before I threw it behind the ‘Mark Spitz’ wall. It sank like a deflated clown, in a pointy hat, streaked with strawberry sauce. The wave of guilt!  Through my whole body, turning in my stomach. I went inside for tea. I told no one. 

 

Memories are like a hall of mirrors. Years later, you only have memory-of-memory. All my life, I’ve never really liked ice cream, the way other people do. But I liked it as an early life lesson, a twitch on the moral compass.

 

 ‘The past beats inside me like a second heart’ said author, John Banville in his novel, The Sea. Indeed.  All praise be, to the luck of a childhood played out on a sunlit street, to the distant bark of a dog we liked to call, Sam Teddy Sugar Lump.