The Repeat Offender

Being a Kajarine girl, I didn’t experience chocolate till the late 60s. Our Easter Eggs were all the hard moulded sugar type ones. Dad loved the Dark Chocolate and mum would buy him one block a week and we were told not to touch it and dad would share it out when he got home from work while having a beer if he felt like it. Well the fear of doing something wrong lasted right up till I was about 12 and I started sneaking a square, then a line, then a ¼, ½ , ¾ (I was learning fractions the good way) would disappear. This caused major angst in the camp. I think this was one of the indicators that we needed our own spending money. Even though I had pocket money I just used it to vary my sugar intake, supplementing with Coke. Dads chocolate moved from the usual position on the top left hand shelf side in the fridge to down to the crispers, up to the meat tray, in the butter compartment, which added a bit of interest for me. Kind of like a fox hunt situation. Id get home from school and as soon as everyone went down stairs, Id go to the fridge avoiding the creaking floorboards which meant Id have to surf along the servery on my tummy and then gently lower myself down to the floor in front of the fridge. Mum had become quite inventive by this stage and started putting the chocolate in the deep freeze in a pea packets and such. The grand finale occured one day when I knew that the chocolate must be in the fridge because they melt in about 5 minutes if not refrigerated. I developed a checking system where I would complete the check in about 10 seconds covering all the usual spots. This day nuthin……. I’m thinking to myself, can’t be nuthin. Being innovative I thought I would put my view point at the bottom of the fridge and look up. oh yes!!! There was the gorgeous glow of the Cadburys "Old Gold" packet which was thrilling. It was perched up on the edge of the meat tray and jammed hard against the inside fridge wall and the ice from the freezer. That’s the day I congratulated myself and ate the whole chocolate on the spot. After that mum decided that she wouldn’t bother hiding them any more and that’s how I became obsessed with Chocolate.