... and whilst we were packing, i found the prototype model of my sister V's medal ... she'd first moulded it with chocolate instead of bronze, to see if the cast worked
... and then she'd given me the chocolate, wrapped in gold paper
... it suddenly seemed like a good time to "invoke the spirits" of the ancestors, not that they have ever seemed far away, and so after having owned it for fifteen months, i unwrapped it
... my mother had once told me how, when i was born in August 1949, my father had arrived at the hospital with a box of chocolates, a rarity for most people in the years of post-war rationing
... it was only a few days later, when she brought me home, that he confessed to having used up her own entire chocolate ration for the coming year
