Honeycomb

I remember a grey Monday, growing up in granite Aberdeen. I came down to breakfast in my school jersey, grey and thick as porridge, to open a tub of margarine and experience a block of bottled sunshine. A honeycomb sat inside, with its layer of white beeswax on top, and bright golden patterns in a cloistered row, each hexagon like a little door. It seemed far too beautiful a thing to spread on toast. Mum produced the plastic honeypot with pictures of busy bees about their craft, only on special occasions, when we had guests for breakfast. It usually only had a regular jar of honey in it. Now it had the honeycomb, bright gold like the flowers it came from, signed off and sealed by the bees in Plockton on the west coast. It glowed inside me for the rest of the day.