On my stroll, I saw this leftover or should I say the accidentally leftover lollipop, its bright sticky sweetness attracting little black ants that I could see drawing closer.

It’s just a mere stick of lollipop but it brought this old tune to my mind, ‘my boy lollipop, by Millie Smalls,’ and I hummed and reminisced as I enjoyed my stroll.

I grew up listening to my dad play this song on his old Grundig. I couldn’t have been more than 5 years old if memory serves me well and I didn’t know what the lyrics meant, but that tune was partly responsible for my kindness to lollipops 😉

I can imagine the disappointment of the young one whose lollipop popped out of their mouth but he or she doesn’t know that their loss offered me a brief dip into beautiful old memories and I daresay the ants were glad too.

Sometimes unexpected things trigger off memories stored in the recesses of our minds; sweet, bittersweet, poignant, dark, sharp memories of childhood and I’ve learnt to embrace all these memories both the beautiful and the ugly ones. They weave together to make me the tapestry of the soul that I am today.

Here’s a little offer of ‘my boy lollipop.’