The soft crunch of an ice lolly as it scrapes against your molars is enough to make you shudder. First around your neck then down your spine into the rest of your body, it gives me quite a chill. The numbing cold of the refreshing treat is as cool as the autumnal winds, yet faintly romantic, bringing me back to my happy childhood by the seaside.
It’s not often I do this but today the people from the high rises have taken to the little sun shine that has found its way onto the grassy plains of Cranberry Park. The ice cream man looks somewhat bemused by the influx of lolly loving locals. Staggering towards the van, some amble along with crutches, some with shorts and training shoes, the young, the old and the infirm. It’s quite nourishing to the soul that one man and his ice creams can generate such a relentless stream of happiness through the community.
I take position on one of the many bird shit splattered park benches, beautifully positioned next to the Technicolor majesty of Foxgloves, Pansies and Rhododendron that have no doubt contributed to the floral city award ten years prior. There is a prickly chill in the air, the sun sits in the sky, but its all one big illusion, for it looks bright and is emanating some heat on my pale skin but its not the scorching roast that we were promised.
I finish crunching the ice lolly all the way down to the woody stick that now leaves that horrible wooden tang on your taste buds. Is this what tree bark tastes like? I discard the horrible piece of timber into the litter bin next to me. I’m wearing stone wash jeans, brown suede shoes and a blue striped button up shirt that now carries a small brown Cappuccino stain. I scrape my shirt as if the stain is going to disappear by magic. Finally deciding its best not to draw attention to it.
To be honest the ice lolly had not filled me up in the slightest. I’m forever hungry. You will not be pleased to know that I’m one of those arrogant people who go about saying ‘I eat loads of junk but never seem to put on weight’. It really is true though, the amount of times that I have failed to resist the tantalizing treats of burger vans, fast food chains and cookie stalls and still unable to pinch an inch of my belly is unbelievable.
I take a walk back to the ice cream van, hands in my pockets like a grumpy schoolboy. I scan the menu (if that’s what you call it) that is stuck on the window presumably with blue tack.
‘Can I have a packet of chocolate buttons please mate?’
The ice cream man looks at me with a perplexing gaze. You could tell I had thrown him off his script, so many people had ordered ice lollies, Mr whippy’s and choc ices, that a small packet of buttons seemed a bit of a challenge to his caveman mind.
‘Buttons!’ I shout to emphasis the fact he’s dragging the transaction into the next century.
He passes the buttons to me with a screwed up face. I pass him an old 50 pence piece.
‘Thank you’ I say with a tiny drop of sarcasm to boot.
I stroll back to the bench with my buttons and to my absolute horror the bench had been taken up my a tramp. Yes a bloody tramp was sitting there if you please. I could smell his pheromones from a couple of yards away, poising the air along with my fragile nostrils. His dead weight of a sack is taking up the larger half of the bench while his fat arse is lent over it, looking down onto the pavement, presumably looking for some crumbs of some sort.
I decide to sit next to him not because I want to, but because I see it as my bench. He’s the one who has stolen it. I pick up the sack and sling it on top of him with anger. He doesn't even glance at me probably, too scared. I am a retired boxer, not that he would know that, but if he did he would scarper like a scolded dog.
I looked in the opposite direction to him, as if to strengthen my disgust. I turn only to prize one of the chocolate buttons from the packet that sits by my side. Then I become shell-shocked! The dirty old tramp puts his grubby hands into my chocolate buttons, taking one and putting it in his mouth with a smile. The cheeky bugger I thought. I take another one from the packet, while giving him a steely glare. And again he takes one, again with a wry smile. At this point I’m shaking with anger and I’m very close to tossing his sack into the bushes. But it gets worst.
He looks at me again with a cheeky grin on his face. To my surprise he has the temerity to once again pop his hands into the packet and take out three of my buttons and offer them to me. Can you believe the cheek of the man. Never before in my born days have I encountered such a merciless thief. No wonder he’s a beggar no one wants someone who is that nasty and that much of a rotten scrounger. I take the buttons that he has the audacity to offer me and chewing them frantically. There are now two left in the packet, I take both of them before he can get his paws on them.
I have a bit of a temper and who could blame me? Of all the places that dirty thief could be, he choose my bench to plonk himself. I sit up from the bench, not saying a word to him. As I walk further up the lane that kinks and veers through the beautiful gardens, I place my hands in my pockets once more. I suddenly stop in my tracks. The sun beating hotter and the smell of nectar filling the air. And there to my astonishment, were my packet of chocolate buttons, they were in my pocket the whole time. With a glance back at the bench, I realised that the tramp wasn't a thief after all. The beggar had saved up for those sweets all day, it was his bench, his chocolates and I was the thief!
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