Malt

A few weeks ago I rode through the little village of East Knoyle, just a couple of miles away, because I was feeling bold enough to attempt to cycle up the steep hills by the village church. As I turned left and headed towards the church I noticed a new building on the edge of the green, and read the signs. It was a post-office. Another one. The old post-office which used to be almost opposite the site of this new one had only opened four mornings a week, and had rows of depressingly empty shelves inside. It was no surprise when it finally faded away.

When I first began working from home, almost fifteen years ago, I had a nightmare time trying to learn when all the local shops and post-offices opened and closed. I would jump in the car to get a packet of work sent off to a customer, arrive at the local shop, and find it was only open half of the week. After another frantic dash through the lanes to the next village, I would either be lucky and find the post-office section open, of more likely find that although the shop was open, the post-office section wasn't.

So the following week, I thought I would get a copy of the local free-adverts paper from the new local shop, and rode up to East Knoyle. They were sorry, but they'd had a rush demand for the paper that day, and had none left. I wandered around the shop anyway, finding it was closer to a delicatessen, bought some soft liquorice and some dried beans, and pedaled off to the next nearest village stores, who also had run out of the free papers.

In the following following week, when Little Petal had a clutch of ebay sales to post out, I persuaded her to not drive up the hill to the big post-office where you always stand for five minutes in the queue, but to drive up to East Knoyle instead. She still had to stand for five minutes waiting for the customer who was already there to finish his deals, but they were chatting quite happily to each other when I looked across from the shelves where I was having my trip down memory lane.

When I was growing up, there was a system called "family allowance", where mothers got weekly coupons to get supplementary foods for their growing children. I remember orange juice, cod-liver oil, rose-hip syrup, powdered milk, which I hated, and a strange turgid-coloured sticky mixture called malt extract, which I loved. And now I was staring at a jar of malt extract on the shelf in front of me, for 95 pence.

I haven't seen malt extract since leaving home all those years ago. I sat impatiently in the passenger seat while Little Petal drove at a respectful pace back home, and then dashed inside for a spoon. I twisted the cap off with the jar held at an unfortunate angle and had sticky threads of a strange turgid-coloured lazy liquid dribble across my hand as I hurriedly moved the lid back over the jar.

Bliss, joy, an "A la recherche du Temps Perdu" moment as the spoon gave up its burden; it was the same stuff. Happiness of haphazard happenstance. It must have been fate that put that jar on the shelf in front of me not half a dozen hours after I had realized my love of malt was piling on the weight again. Like Charles Fort said, "It steam-engines when it becomes Steam-engine time"

Now, perhaps, I can stop using malted wholemeal flour in my bread and get back to spelt and rye mixtures, with a single daily hit of malt straight from the jar.

And, what is really bugging me, is, what wrong turn would my life have taken if, two weeks ago, I had managed to get a copy of the free-adverts paper and looked through the part-time situations vacant section?