Author: Michael Cronin

Michael Cronin's new book , Time Tracks, is part auto-biographical/part observation of a time that has long-since past; memories of a 1960s childhood where biscuit-eating was a ritual - from scraping the chocolate off the Cadbury's Snack to removing the chocolate membrane off the marshmallows. In keeping with the season: "Christmas took the biscuit. The tins piled precariously high in the local supermarket were bright advertisements of abundance. The memory would linger through the year as the tins were recycled as resting places for shoe polish and J-Cloths, the incongruous clutter replacing the orderly maze of the red paper partitions in the newly opened box. The Empires of the Boxes were from the New World. USA Assorted, a ritzy invitation to the melting pot. All eyes focused on the round chocolate biscuit with the jellyfish spread languidly over the hole in the middle. With the swiftness of Fagan's pickpockets, small hands snatched this piece of biscuit exotica and the tongue savoured the dissolving sugar of the jellyfish, wrested by beaver teeth from the chocolate base. One night in Barcelona, the Catalan wife of an Irish friend told me that when she thought of Ireland, two words came to mind - tea, biscuits. Tea and biscuits, this indeed is where the Remembrance of Things Past might begin, in the pockets of detail, the crumbs from our tables, the touchstones of memory".