Mr Whippy's Long Awaited Return to Fernhill

   I think it’s been close to fifteen years since I last heard “Greensleeves” (yes, that’s the icecream truck song) echoing through the suburb I grew up in. Well. We’re surrounded by hills. Everything echoes here. Regardless, yesterday the waves of nostalgia and Greensleeves drifted through my window. Holy wow. MR WHIPPY HAD RETURNED TO FERNHILL.

   The street I had grown up on was a small residential street that leads to nowhere, and has nothing but small, family houses. The most exciting things that happened there was a stranger danger incident from when I was quite small (I blame Barney the dinosaur) and Mr Whippy paying us occasional visits. If my mum was in a good mood and had some coins on her, I was allowed to go buy myself an ice-cream. But only the vanilla one with rainbow sprinkles. The other ones were too expensive.

Bane of my childhood.

   It became almost an expectation over the summer- that Mr Whippy would come up my otherwise uneventful street and cold tasty fun would be had. It was a marvellous arrangement. I mean, sure, we had ice cream at home. Heck, we even had rainbow sprinkles at home. (For fairybread purposes, of course.) But it just tasted better from the back of the icecream truck. Which, even I’ll admit in hindsight, sounds dodgy as hell.

   I don’t remember when Mr Whippy stopped coming. But over time, he slowly disappeared.

   In fact, I’d almost forgotten about Mr Whippy until a few weeks ago when I was skyping my friend Dom. Suddenly I heard a familiar sound in the background- Greensleeves! Shortly after, his dad entered with an icecream. Hurrah. He got one with the chocolate top (which I was never allowed) which showed that clearly, his parents love him more. Or have more disposable income than mine did. Close enough.

   I was slightly envious, but I thought that was that, and it was just that he lives in a more populated area than myself, and that Mr Whippy was a regular occurance for him.

   I was sitting in my bedroom, writing a blog post about how I swear I’ll write something decent soon when I heard it.

   Da- da- da- da- dee-dee- da- dee-da…

   Greensleeves!

   Mr Whippy had returned to Fernhill. As if to taunt me, he parked right outside my house. How I had missed him! How delicious ice cream would be at last!

   Alas. I had no money on me.  There was only one solution.

“Muuuuum! Mr Whippy’s back!”

“Yeah, I know…”

“Um, do you have any coinage I can borrow?”

“Coinage, yup. Borrow, nope.”

   And that is why I haven’t had Mr Whippy in fifteen years.