Chocolate Orange

Years ago, I think in 1983, Moonface and I had a holiday in what was then Czechoslovakia, behind the Iron Curtain. We drove there across Europe and were struck by the paucity of foodstuffs in the shops and of general goods for sale. Nevertheless, my memories are of an excellent and exciting holiday.

Since we drove there, we had stocked up with food to eat on the journey and somehow an orange had rolled under a seat and become lost for a week or so. We found it again, looking dessicated and tired, when we were staying at a campsite somewhere in the Czech countryside. (As an aside, the campsite was overrun with voles: their burrows were everywhere and we could see them beneath our tent groundsheet in the evenings). We were about to dump the orange when we were asked about it by the couple next to us, they had not eaten one for years. So of course we gave it to them, feeling thoroughly guilty about our Western ignorance of their relative poverty.

I was reminded of this by Dorota when we met in Wroclaw earlier this year, as her memories of pre-'89 Poland include having oranges only at Christmas: the feast and the fruit are firmly linked in her mind. She also likes chocolate, so I determined to buy her a Terry's Chocolate Orange when she visited England in September. But I forgot to buy one for her. We met three times, each time I forgot to look for one beforehand, each time I remembered as soon as we met but never mentioned that I wanted to give her one.

She's recently found a new boyfriend, an Englishman living in Poland. When she told me that he was flying home to Manchester for a long weekend I told Dorota about the Chocolate Orange, and suggested that she ask him for one. She wouldn't, of course. I was quite tempted to dig out his email address from the internet and suggest it to him, but that would have been creepy and interfering and she'd have screamed at me. So I didn't.

Then, last weekend when Moonface and I were walking around Clifton I spotted a pile ready for sale before Christmas, and told her about the ungiven gift. She sneered a little. I think.

And last Monday I spoke to Dorota after her boyfriend had returned from the UK and spent the weekend with her. He had brought her a Terry's Chocolate Orange as a present.

How on earth did he know?

:o/