MILK SNATCHERS GET LESS CRUMBLE

Where I’m from, community calls. She’s the grin I cast to the man with a tattooed face I see everyday, whose name I’ve never known. She’s the extra portion of pudding my mum will take round to our next-door neighbour. It’s the six-pack of Frazzles my neighbour brought round after my dad fixed his telly.

 

Our home has seen hundreds of feet on its doormat. A traffic of people always in and out, stopping by for cups of tea with my family, even when I’m not there. Saturday nights are for friends to stay when they can’t get home from town, my mum in her nightie laughing at us as we get home.

 

I moved to the Big Smoke, and there, community doesn’t seem to call anymore- she’s got her fingers in other pies. The harshest lesson being that people won’t always behave like you expect, how you’ve been taught to. 

 

Modern day milk snatchers circulate, often hidden behind left-wing facades. Desperately anti-Farage but don’t want to hear anything about helping someone out, and certainly not for free. I wonder if they know what socialism means.

 

I look for community here, and I find her sometimes. The shopkeeper sells me the special cigarettes that are magically half the normal price and we talk about the jelly alien toys they sell. “The kids haven’t bought a single one but I loved them when I was younger”. I loved them too. I wonder if Ipads are more interesting now.

 

I wonder that, in a political climate where left and right are so polarised, we’ve all drifted from what always mattered. And that was how we look after each other, with a delight in sharing. Sharing the joy of having, especially with those who have shared with you before.

 

I’m back at home and I read a note stuck on our fridge. It’s from our neighbour, thanking mum for some crumble she made him. He passed away only a few weeks ago, and all I remember was that he was kind.

 

I guess community doesn’t always flourish in families or places where you don’t need to share. But I bet it’s lonely being miserly, and you certainly get fewer helpings of crumble.