They very kindly asked me to contribute to their Sound Sculpture feature on Sat 27th March. What was the topic? Well, just for once it wasn’t about top tips for surviving a first date, but burnt toast. Yes, I was waxing lyrical, about the sound of my mother, Kathleen, relentlessly and inevitably scraping the burnt toast early every morning.
Hearing even a faint echo of that sound now conjures up Proustian memories of lying in a warm bed & being woken by the scraping-of-very-burnt-toast-alarm-clock. The enticing aroma wafting up the stairs completed the job. The expectation of hot, charcoal flavoured, buttered toast slathered with chunky home-made (and also slightly burnt) marmalade never failed to get me up. David Essex (whom I had a crush on once) was also on the programme and my heart beat a little faster when I heard that he also liked burnt toast – oh, crumbs!
You can listen to the programme by clicking here – my bit is about 10 mins in, but David Essex is on throughout.
Mary