Cereal Boxes
There was a time, he remembered, when breakfast cereal boxes contained a surprise, a gift, a treat. Something a child searched for and cherished, showing it off to friends at school as a signifier of status. He once collected the entire set of cricket cards found in the Weet-Bix box, trading his doubles at school with his best friend. Last week he bought a box of Corn Flakes as an act of nostalgia and sprinkled a handful of sultanas on top and remembered his Scout Leader called them ‘blowflies’ while on a Jamboree, and the name stuck with him ever since. This morning he poured out Corn Flakes and heard the scrape of autumn leaves raked up, the clatter of pegs dropping into the peg basket, and the rattle of dry bones. He wondered if they would ever put a trinket back into cereal boxes and surmised, that for him, it would be loss summarised on a bumper sticker.
A Fullness in Brevity - Adam Byatt 