You could detect the smell of creosote, chicken feed and fresh bread long before you reached the general store. The bell inside uncoiled and sprang back to welcome customers. The assistant sprang up to do likewise. Inside was warm as a womb. The saw-mill next door droned like a hive of eternal bees in permanent summer buzz. Towards the back was an officious post office counter where the woman, like an aging dowager aunt, doled out the weekly pittance mother had to spend, and looked over her glasses and down her nose at us. She counted the money meticulously, to the last penny.

Galvanized buckets, blood and bone meal, dog biscuits, potatoes, tulip bulbs and light bulbs, tins of soup, pineapple chunks, pearl barley, flour, hairgrips and elastic bands juggled for attention in corners and on shelves. Mother bought a malt loaf, a pot of jam and a quarter of tea. The tea was shoveled onto a square of waxed paper which the assistant deftly formed into a packet and labeled conveniently. Jam was a luxury. Butter pressed on sugar was the norm.

"Will that be all?"

"Run over and get Mammy one o' them bags o' sticks."

Payment would be placed in a tube and sucked away to a mysterious upper realm where sat a shadowy ogre, high up behind frosted glass. Change would arrive by return tube and be counted back with equal prudence.

There were sweeties of course in those days, displayed on the counter and such sweeties...cherry lips and stick-to-the-bag scented drops, brandy balls, powdery toffee bonbons and mmm...maple brazils — far too dear at two bob a quarter when most were sixpence. Asking would only get you a quare skelp so we didn't dare and anyway the post mistress would be watching.

Nonetheless, each child volunteered to be a beast of burden, carrying some small item to lighten the load because there was one more shop on the way home and if she felt tired, and if we were very quiet and very, very good and didn't show her up, we might call in, and we'd get barley sugar perhaps or Smarties. We approached the corner shop not daring to suggest the hoped-for visit.

"Come on in here," said Mammy and our faces beamed. Then one day a miracle happened. She took a crinkled brown envelope from her pocket, leaned over conspiratorially and whispered "Pick whatever you'd like."

"Anything, Mammy?"

"Anything from the counter," she confirmed, "but never let on I bought you any sweets with this money from the church; it's supposed to all go on shoes."

I could only just see up to the counter and could barely read the labels on the vast array of colourful things that dazzled my imagination. But the glint of choice opened to my mind a darker realization, which gradually unfolded over many years.

My mother had no choice, only benefits and charity. Charity — cold as an empty pillow.

Oonah V. Joslin was born in Northern Ireland. She won the Micro Horror Trophy 2007 and has had work included in two Bewildering Stories' Quarterly Reviews. Oonah is managing editor of the fledgling magazine, Every Day Poetry. She was a judge in The Shine Poetry competition 2008. You can find links to her work at www.writewords.org.uk/oonah.