Free Toast by Nigel Slater

sporty enough to be permanently on the mini Monte Carlo rallythat spread throughout the entire house. Dinky Chevrolets and Corgi MGs lined up bumper to bumper along every skirting board. Occasionally, one was turned over, the scene of a devastating crash. However, the cars weren’t allowed on the stairs. ‘Someone will slip and hurt themselves.’ This was my licence to send the least valued ones careering headlong down the banisters instead.
    My collection was pretty cool. I had the much envied pink Chevrolet Impala, the Corgi Mini Countryman in mint green (the ones where both back doors opened) and even a metallic purple Buick. What I didn’t have was the Royal Rolls-Royce. With its glass roof and waving queen, its plastic flag on the radiator and hand-painted royals, it was out of the realm of pocket money. I just had to have it. Nothing would be a bigger sock in the eye for my best friend Warrel Blubb.
    Nagging, if done regularly enough and with spirited reasoning rather than a spoiled whine, was a tactic that worked with my parents…eventually. It could take weeks, sometimes months, but at some point they would come up with the goods. Usually just after I had lost interest and gone on to the next thing. My mother agreed that she would get the Roller for me and let me pay her back at sixpence a week. I knew she would never really ask for the money, doing that thing that parents do of forgetting on purpose. One Saturday morning we walked Wolverhampton for it, but were told over and over again it was out of stock. Then, in a part of town my mother had never daredto set foot in, we found a shop whose owner, a quiet man with owl eyes and wire-framed glasses, who it turned out knew my uncle Geoff, would order one for us. ‘Anything for such a sweet boy,’ he said.
    Rarely was I forced to eat everything on my plate. With my mother’s cooking it could have been classed as child abuse. My finicky ways were tolerated as if I was an only child. But occasionally I went over the limit. One cold Monday I had left more of my lunch than usual. It was more a case of boredom than bad cooking. I got down from the table and thought nothing more about it.
    That afternoon I got home to find no one in. Sitting in the middle of the dining-room table was my Royal Rolls-Royce, complete with sunroof and lifelike corgis. I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hand. I stroked the long maroon bonnet. Yes, I was disappointed it wasn’t the jet black it looked in the photographs but it didn’t matter that much. I could barely wait to show Warrel Blubb.
    I was hungry to break the news of the car’s arrival. I wanted to run round with it then and there. But I could have more fun than that. He had had a telling-off recently – for walking in the house with his wet shoes on. Last time I saw him he was sulking, gazing out of his bedroom window. Vulnerable. I decided to leave the car on the dining-room window sill. That way, he couldn’t miss it when he passed on his way to school. I wouldn’t even mention it. Just leave it there and watch his face through the window.
    But there, perched on the corner of the hearth, about two feet from the electric fire, was a plate. My plate. Exactly as I had left it on the table, except that the gravy had now shrunk to a thin, rubbery brown skin around the remains of the lamb chop. The boiled potato had gone grey at the edges and the peas had sunken and dried.
    So that was to be the deal. Clean my plate and I would get the car. Apparently, Warrel Blubb wasn’t going to be the only one to eat shit.

Apple Crumble
    Snow has fallen upon deep snow. The sky, lavender, grey and deep scarlet-rose, is heavy with more. Cars, barely one every half-hour, make their way slowly home, their tyres crunching on the freezing snow. The white boulder I rolled yesterday and left on the grass verge shines amber under the street lamp. My mittens are stiff. My face numb.