Forbidden Juice

Dad explains that when I was a kid I had been desperate for this string of sweet juice that I thought was sex energy. I was mad to have it, but I'd misbehaved so it was being kept from me. He said it was just Ribena, but I remember it as this concentrated solution of yellow Space Dust and sherbet lemonade steeped in tobacco tins.

Mr Obama Goes To Washington

I am in a communal sittingroom. I turn on the telly- white noise then a blue screen with fragments of  text - now a scene from a cheap American film. The setting is the early sixties, the dialogue uninspired. Lead character walks on and I realise it's a remake of Frank Capra's Mr Smith Goes To Washington but it's about Barack Obama's early life. It is as if it has been made with the racist undertones of a 1930's film so that gawky teen Obama is played by a white actor with exaggerated bulging eyes. I am angry at the grotesque caricature.

In the original film James Stewart plays the part of Mr Smith a naive idealist who fights political corruption and guards American values as a moral hero.