Although it was a very long time ago, the fact remains that I was once a child, and a child with all the boundless weirdness that only children possess. But even I am puzzled by the child I once was.
My eating habits in particular marked me out as an odd little boy. Fancy foods like pasta and cheese seemed to me outlandish and unnecessary and I largely avoided them. It wasn’t only cheese, though. My mother once told me that a friend’s mum had expressed delight at my going round for tea, on the grounds that I never wanted cake, but only bread and butter. I still hold this truth to be self-evident, that all foods are not created equal. There is bread. And there is butter. The rest is dust.
However, even a palate as austere as mine required some occasional excitement and so, like any child, there were treats I coveted and, for me, the apex of the food mountain, the zenith of the culinary firmament was the Holy Trinity of Dried Fruit: the raisin, the sultana and the currant.
I loved these things so much that one birthday the only thing I asked for was a bag of each, which I put in jars under my bed, so that even in the smallest, darkest hours, there would always be comfort and solace, the hope of a handful of tiny, wizened grapes.
Now, we are approaching the season of waiting expectantly for treats, and specifically the season of tiny, wizened grapes, in puddings, cakes and pies. For Christians, this Sunday marks the start of that season of hope, and we call it Advent. We look to the coming of Jesus, and all the hope embodied in a tiny, wizened baby born into poverty in the 1st century equivalent of a hotel garage and in solidarity with every one of us, rich and poor, resident and refugee.
At Christmas, we all hope for different things; but I reckon that the sheer, minute insignificance of the baby in the garage helps us understand that no hope is too small, no desire too insubstantial, no wish too puny to be worthy of fulfilment. In that hopeful, hoped for child, all our other hopes are dignified. Even the hope of dried fruit under the bed.
My mum and my sister both deny any memory of my odd dried fruit obsession. However, they are both alarmingly eager to confirm that I was an odd child.