43. Magnum

...being some thoughts on a very popular ice cream, and how one's relationship to it might mirror ones relationship to life itself.

When I start out on writing a piece of poetry, I can never really tell where it is going to take me. I am sure that there are plenty of poets who conceive the whole thing in their minds and just have to transcribe it, transferring it from inside of their skull to the outside, and placing it on a piece of paper, or a computer screen. When they write the first word, they already know how the whole thing is going to finish, what subtexts and hidden meanings there will be and where the boundaries are between what they are actually saying and what they intend to say. It doesn’t often happen to me like that. I feel that I am at my most successful when the meaning of the whole thing only really dawns on me whilst I am writing, or even sometimes after I have finished.

I considered this in a previous article when I presented a poem which I thought was a sonnet about a basketball, but turned out to be about Donald Trump. It never ceases to amaze me, what the brain can get up to in the background when you are thinking about something else entirely.

I enjoy writing - pecking away at a keyboard, or scribbling away in a notebook or even a piece of paper - usually one purloined from the photocopier at work. There’s usually plenty in there and nobody misses a sheet or two. Writing seems to bring me a respite from the cares of everyday life. In some ways it is like meditation for me - a place where I can find my centre and relax in it - as they say, moving from the boundaries of the ego and conjuring up all sorts of different opinions, frames of mind and emotions. Clearly, all that sounds terribly pretentious, but then again, most of the stuff that my ego free self comes up with is concerned with things like full english breakfast, alphabet spaghetti, having it off with a creature from the sea, or being pestered by a budgie.

A similar phrase to finding your centre and relaxing in it is finding flow, or getting into the zone. The last time I had a bout of poor mental health, I was advised to find my flow - to find something that I could enjoy and get so immersed in that I became unaware of the passage of time. I had a few stabs at different things in the search. Jigsaws and sudoku puzzles worked for a while, but I always had the feeling at the back of my mind that they were a bit of an indulgence, a waste of time. I felt that I could easily waste a day on stuff like that and have nothing to show for it at the end.

I also had a go at bird watching. which is a very pleasant occupation. Out in nature, seeing the sights and enjoying the sounds. I started to think of it like fishing, without the cruelty of yanking something out of its natural environment by the roof of its mouth and seeing it gasping for oxygen in an alien atmosphere. Fishing has never sat well with me, but watching birds - I can enjoy that. The novelty wore off a bit when I started to spend time with other bird watchers - or twitchers as they like to call themselves. They all seemed over interested in ticking boxes, and showing off outrageously expensive cameras, binoculars, telescopes and hybrid binocular camera telescope type things. I can’t afford stuff like that. I just wanted to see the birds playing in the trees and by the edge of the pond. I felt like I didn’t fit in with tat crowd at all.

Having now alienated a good proportion of my readership, I feel bound to point out that I am sure that there are many fine people who indulge in angling and ornithology. They are all in a continuum of naturalists with a heritage from St Francis of Assisi through to Chris Packham by way of Charles Darwin and David Attenborough. It’s just that the serious practice of such pursuits is not for me. My interest in nature doesn’t really go a lot further than enjoying watching animals in the way that I enjoy watching chimps playing at the zoo. It is fascinating, sometimes funny, sometimes calming, but I don’t want to be an expert, or buy any serious chimp watching equipment.

The thing that I can do is sit in front of a computer or a sheet of paper and spend hours on end churning out nonsense like this. I can find flow doing this, and really get into the zone. Writing is a delight to me - a bit like eating ice cream - which is a real pleasure, but one that sadly does not last long enough to be truly called relaxing.

One time I decided to write about ice cream. It is something that I have always been interested in. When I was a kid we might have had a small block of vanilla wrapped in waxed paper in the ice box compartment of the fridge. It would be used for a treat after dinner. As technology progressed, plastic tubs and freezers came out, instead of a simple block of vanilla, we might have had raspberry ripple, soft scoop Cornish, or Neapolitan flavour.

Outside, we could have Mr Whippy from an ice cream van which came down the street playing a strange chimed version of Popeye the Sailor Man. I liked it with a chocolate flake in it and just a touch of red sauce. These cornets were also an essential part of a day at the seaside or a trip to the park. There were lollies too - funny feet (in the shape of a foot), feast (A piece of chocolate buried in chocolate ice cream coated in chocolate), and the lolly gobble choc bomb which was a bit of a disappointing mixture for something with such a wonderful name.

The Viennetta was introduced just after I turned twenty. It was obviously the sort of ice cream that Vivaldi, Bach or Mozart would have tucked into whilst under the patronage of some grand King in a huge European palace. I still enjoy Viennetta best of all when listening to baroque music.

Around a decade later, Magnum came onto the scene. Like Viennetta, it was an adult ice cream. A Magnum is an ice cream lolly on a stick, with a generous thick coating of chocolate around it. A double pleasure. It is presumably named after the large luxury wine bottle, but there is more than a hint of the large gun beloved of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry in the name.“ Do you feel lucky, Punk?” Back when they first came out it was a real thrill, just holding one in your hand, feeling its weight, watching the cold air rise off it, waiting to hear the crack of the chocolate when you bit into it.

Magnum! I wanted to write about that ice cream. I wanted to express my feelings about that ice cream. I wanted to explore that Ice cream from every angle, and get into the zone, find my flow and relax in my centre whilst I did it.

So I did.

And there, buried deep within all the creamy, chocolatey thoughts, unbeknown to me, was the image of my dad, in a care home, in his second childhood, nearing the end of his days. Dad! How did you get into that poem?

Magnum

Sweet, creamy vanilla ice cream on the inside 
Thick milk chocolate on the outside 
Magnum Classic! 
They would have rationed it when there was a war on 
But not in these decadent days 
Go on… 
Never mind austerity 
Treat yourself 
Wallow in it 
Ice cream and chocolate 
The finest achievements of human civilization 
Never mind Mozart 
Never mind Leonardo 
Never Mind Wagner’s ring cycle 
Be honest 
You would give up all that culture for ice cream and chocolate 
in the blink of an eye 
I know I would 
It’s what life is all about 
Pleasure… Indulgence… Hedonism! 
 
And at the finish 
When all the ice cream has gone 
You are left with a flat wooden stick 
A flat wooden stick that you never really wanted in the first place 
A flat wooden stick with a smear of chocolate clinging stubbornly in a line around its middle 
You never gave that flat wooden stick a second thought whilst you were wallowing in luxury 
Now it’s all you have left 
 
Do you accept that you are finished?  
Throw it away? 
With the good taste still in your mouth? 
 
Or do you lick at the remaining scraps of chocolate 
Try to scrape them off with your teeth 
Rub at them with your tongue 
Replacing the taste of vanilla  
Which compliments the chocolate 
With the taste of flat wooden stick 
Which does not. 
 
Like an old, old person in a nursing home 
You have to extract every last morsel of pleasure 
No matter how small 
How tainted  
How insignificant 
Because the experience that you are now coming to the  
end of 
Was so good.