Open Writing

Do you remember all those sweets you had as a child ?

It began for me when I was about three in 1925 and we lived in Islington in north London, in my Great Aunt Annie’s house in Stanley Road, when my great grandma would dive into her big apron pocket and give me a pat-a-cake biscuit or an acid tablet, of which Mum would relieve me when I returned to our kitchen.

Over the road from the house was ‘the little shop’ which was really a converted house, with a front room window of clear glass set out with all kinds of childish sweeties. There we could buy sherbert dabs or sherbert fountains, licorice pipes or strips, licorice boot laces, pink and white sugar mice, rhubarb and custard, sweets shaped like chops, peas and potatoes, Pontefract cakes, tiger nuts, gob-stoppers, or Palm toffee, which came in slabs and the lady would break it up with a small toffee hammer.

Round the corner in Kingsbury Terrace a little old lady often had a tray of toffee apples she had made, balanced on an upturned apple box in her street doorway. These were one of my favourites.

Marjorie Dunwell was in my class at St. Judes’ school. In her Dad’s shop near the school I bought milk gums, sherbert lemons, jelly babies, and toasted teacakes, made with dessicated coconut.

In a funny old tobacconist’s shop round the corner in St. Judes Street we could buy little boxes of Imps... tiny black comfits that were like cough sweets.

Mum knew all the sweet shops in our shopping area, including the one opposite Z. Dudley draper’s store. It had small round glass dishes of home-made chocolates in the window, and Jordan almonds, coconut ice, and her favourite Ceylon cream.

On one stall in Ridley Road market, at Christmas they sold tins of Bluebird toffees and boxes of marzipan fruits.

In a shop in Balls Pond Road at the top of Stanley Road where we lived was the shop we went into most often on our way back from shopping in Sainsbury and Ridley Road market, and where we always bought our slabs of Cadbury’s fruit and nut, dark Ambrosia plain chocolate, and Cadbury whipped cream walnut whirls.

Dad would sometimes buy us a Toblerone, that special triangular chocolate bar.

Every now and again they had boxes of Rowntree’s throw-outs for sale. These we found utterly delectable, although there was no fancy frilled paper wrapping and the chocolates were sometimes misshapen. Mum favoured the chocolate caramels, but I liked the chocolate fudge, vanilla, violet or rose creams.
Sometimes we bought Dad a small packet of Craven A cigarettes there.

At Christmas he would bring home small round wooden boxes of rose, lemon, or crème de menthe Turkish delight dusted with icing sugar.

When we went to Auntie Flo’s by steam train from Paddington to Yiewsley, our pennies went into in a chocolate machine on the station platform. We pulled out the drawer to get our silver wrapped packet of Nestle’s milk chocolate. Other machines dispensed Wrigley’s spearmint and chewing gum.

When I was away in hospital with scarlet fever, Dad would send in bags of Silmos Lollies, which were posh fruit sweets.

In the window display of a sweet shop in Kingsland Road next door to the pub on one side and Cook’s Eel and Pie Shop on the other, were pear drops, which I always avoided, dolly mixture, chocolate buttons, Fox’s glacier mints, fruit lumps, wine gums, butterscotch, licorice allsorts, licorice comfits, hundreds and thousands, fruit bonbons, buttered brazils, brandy balls, mint humbugs, pink and white marshmallows, and orange and lemon slices sold in round boxes.

At Christmas we had stuffed dates which Mum made at home, filling stoned dates with marzipan. They didn’t last long I can tell you. On the Christmas tree or in my stocking would be red-netted bags of chocolate money, all in gold paper.

In Woolworth’s at the corner of the market we bought Devon toffees, Nuttall’s mintoes, Fry’s Crunchie bars, Fry’s chocolate cream, peppermint creams, and Cadbury chocolate flakes, with Easter eggs in their season.

I remember one day in Southend-on-sea standing at a rock stall outside the Kursaal, watching how they made sticks of bright pink peppermint rock with the name of the seaside resort going all the way through. It was magic. In the fairground other stalls were making and selling fluffy pink candy floss.

Mum’s sister Auntie Alice lived in Crouch Hill in a flat above a sweet shop. When the proprietress was on holiday she would go down and serve behind the counter on which were jars of boiled sweets, aniseed balls, gob stoppers, lollipops, sticks of barley sugar or twisted cough candy, bars of nougat, Clarnico caramels, Caley’s chocolate, Cadbury Milk Tray, Rowntree’s motoring chocolate, and peanut brittle, much liked by Mum, although it played havoc with her false teeth.

At Highbury Hill school tuck shop Mars bars and MilkyWays were sold.

Although bubble gum was to be had from our little shop near home, we never bought it, as it seemed only the young rough boys chewed it and Mum would have frowned on it.

My great aunt Emma who lived next door would regularly make a large amount of pink and white coconut ice in her big black saucepan on her kitchen range. It was cut up and wrapped to be taken to the autumn Church Sales of Work.