Warming Up

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Sunday 28th September 2008

Another blast from the past today when I bought myself a pack of Victory Vs. I used to love these as a child, but of course, back then kids, we used to buy them loose at the sweetshop where they'd be scooped out of a big jar and put in a little white paper bag for you. You'd either get a quarter, or if money was tight, just two ounces. To be honest, even to me, that seems like something from the war. But we're going back thirty years now and thirty years before that the war was rather a recent memory, so that just goes to show something.
I have a feeling that back in the 1970s Victory Vs still contained chloroform or ether and that if you ate too many you'd get high or sleepy or something. Or maybe my mum just told me not to eat too many, remembering a time when there were more active ingredients, and so I imagined that when I ate too many it was having some psychedelic effect on me. I used to love them anyway, whatever effect they did or didn't have. Though today as I wolfed down a whole pack as I did a bit of my script editing work, I remembered what the definite effects if such gluttony was. The Victory V dust starts to gather at the back of your throat. You have to clear your throat with a bit of a cough. It's been a few decades since I have experience such a thing. It took me flying back in time to the Tweentown sweetshop and all the things I have described above. What will the ten year olds of 2008 be remembering in 2038? That seems like so ridiculously far in the future, but then 1978 doesn't really seem all that long ago to me. And maybe 1948 seems like just yesterday to my parents' generation. Oh dear.