It is an insidious undercover organisation when one thinks of the example one should set.
It is more clandestine than MI5, more secretive than the CIA
There are passwords slight intonations of the voice, a certain sidelong glance that only those in its inner circle can interpret.
I refer to the jelly baby brotherhood and the members of the lolly snake consumers lodge. Why grown men, full of macho, should resort to such childish sustenance heaven alone knows and, anyway, nobody’s asking it.
Sufficient to say it is a substitute for bunny rugs, teddy bears, an antidote to workaday discipline, a panacea of pressure.
I say this, tongue in cheek, because that’s the only damn place where there’s any room for it.
We keep our forbidden sweets in official envelopes filing them under C for Confectionary which is nearly as secretive as you can get.
Some may say we have never grown up, that our tastes are immature; that instead of sucking our thumbs we suck these childish confections.
Only this week one of my bearded colleagues began nipping and mauling a lolly snake, stretching it until its coils snapped and wolfing it down while we broke into a low chant, waving our lolly bags.
This rite was viewed with horror by the salad-and-celery bunch whose slogan is emaciate is great, mate.
Yet there is an ascetic cleanliness about a shapely lolly snake, and if jelly baby consumption is crude and juvenile, remember ancestors ate the real thing and thank your stars you weren’t around.
There is also a reptilian rapport with childhood and the long lost lolly bag ebullience that attended sticky-fingered youth.
Small suburban country shops had little trays with sweets a few cents a time, orbs and spheres to suck and relish; gobstoppers extraordinary that would rot whalebone.
Those were the days of hoarded pocket-money with small girls hanging around for the young sugar daddies.
Jelly babies and snakes. Her eyes would light and her small dainty fingers probe the bag like a doctor’s scalpel.
She married a doctor eventually, I recall, and he has her walled her up in some nunnery of nutrition where jelly babies are children of the Devil Decay and lolly snakes are the serpents of temptation whether lying sweet-fanged on some confectionary counter or that tree hissing in someone’s ear about toffee apples.
I must confess to a terrible experience last week.
My wife found a bag of forbidden fat fetchers in my satchel, a writhing. mass of lolly snakes and a whole nursery of jelly babies.
Snakes and jelly babies. What childish folly, what calorie mad ness is this?
The kilojoule killjoy that she is she was soon on the phone to other wives, for she can be sharper than the serpent’s tooth even if it is only glucose, gelatine and artificial colouring.
Next morning there was a coolness towards me in the office.
I was called to an extraordinary meeting of the jelly baby and snake committee.
The head snake charm er hissed at me. “You are no longer the courier. You have betrayed us by loose security. The brotherhood rejects you. So snake off”.
So I went, writhing with embarrassment.
This week I sent the head snake charmer a small offering through the post.
He gave me a slight inclination of the head when I next saw him and I hope things will crawl to a satisfactory conclusion, and while the jelly babies not yet out of the wood I can see light through the branches.
My wife is still in a state of full alert, continually searching my satchel and sending scrapings from my denture mug for analysis and any signs of sugar particles.
I went into my favourite sweet shop where they understand me
“I’m so glad you’re here,” said the attendant, “We’re just bedding the jelly babies down for the night.”
“Pop a handful of the little dears in a bag,” I said, “and adder few snakes for kicks.”
I hissed and hushabyed them into my hip pocket.
I have now put them in my safe deposit box and hidden the key.
If I’m going to be left holding the jelly baby it will be in a secure spot.
If questioned I will answer evasively and, of course, with a forked tongue!
Max Fatchen