Sweets

Hear this blog post read aloud:

We started with a few minutes to relax, get comfortable in our seats, take some deep breaths and close our eyes. Then with our eyes closed, we thought about the associations sweets have for us, with suggestions to help us to think of: 

• memories from our own childhood, the tastes and smells of sweets we were given, where we were given them and when
• sweets that remind us of other people, for example, children in our lives both in the past and the present, our parents, family & friends
• sweets associated with places we know or places we’ve visited

Then we passed around a selection of old-fashioned sweets from a wonderful sweet shop in Hawes, Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dale, where I’d had the pleasure recently to step back in time to my childhood. Eating some of the sweets and talking (when our mouths weren’t full!), we shared lots of memories, most happy, others not. Read on for the stories some of us have chosen to share with you in this blog post.

Tony Goulding

Sweet things

It would be hard to find a subject that was more evocative of childhood, indeed some of my oldest memories are focused on sweets. I remember the local sweet shop on the corner of Sandy Lane and Cleveleys Avenue. In here I would buy penny arrow bars, banana flavoured toffee was my favourite. Other times the shopkeeper would have to reach up to get one of the selection of jars on the shelves behind the counter then weigh a quarter pound of sugar bon-bons or mint imperials which were my gran’s choice.

One vivid memory relating this shop was of sneaking back after it had closed and pushing a few pennies through its letter box to assuage my guilt at keeping my change when I had been given too much!

A little later memory was the “Pick ‘n’ Mix” counter in Woolworth’s on Wilbraham Road.

Various sweets in a wider sense are associated with different times in the year, chocolate eggs at Easter, toffee apples and treacle toffee for Bonfire Night and of course the ubiquitous selection boxes as a Christmas present. My two brothers and I would usually receive one each when my Uncle Denis made his annual visit. At Christmas too there would be bags of chocolate coins, and a box of sugared orange and lemon slices complete with a prized cherry in its centre. These days of course “trick or treat” on Halloween night has added to this list but I don’t recall it ever being so significant in my childhood.

I was a great lover of toffee especially “Toffos”.

My addiction resulted in an embarrassing and painful episode. During my early teenage years, I was receiving a course of orthodontic treatment and had been fitted with a metal brace on my bottom teeth. Despite specific instructions not to, on my way home from school a few weeks later, I gave in to my craving and bought a tube of my favourite sweets. Unsurprisingly the result was a “messed up” brace and a subsequent return visit to a then very irate dentist!

Pauline Omoboye

Bittersweet

When I think about the sweets I like
There's something that spoils the taste
It's because they way they were presented
Bundled in my hand with haste.
The bag contains sweets I fancied all brightly
Although looking appetising, 
To me, not quite inviting.
The sweets looked and smelt the way they should
The appeal for most would cause no hesitation
Carefully picked he knew I liked them,
The perfect presentation.
But these sweets were used as bribery
To get me in that room
To make me do the things I hate
I whispered make it soon.
He shook the bag of sweets he had
And promised there would be more
I shook my head as I refused and run to the locked door.
Now when thinking of the sweets I liked
Two thoughts come to my mind,
Sherbet lemons, bonbons, Refreshers what a find.
Thought two brings flashbacks and things that remind me
Of the dangers in those wrappers oh so neat
To reveal the past within them
To me it's bittersweet.

© Pauline Omoboye

Jolene Sheehan

Sweet Memories

Margaret’s session on sweets brought back a flood of memories, as did chatting with others in the group. I found myself drifting back through different times in my life, the earliest being visits to my nan and granddad’s house, just four doors down from where I grew up.

My granddad was a sugar fiend like me. We’d make regular trips to the corner shop for ice pops, no more than 10p each for as long as I can remember, and fizzy pop in glass bottles we’d later take back for a few pennies’ refund. Mum’s house was a treat-free zone, her best effort to keep us healthy, though that only made the illicit joy of Nan’s cake tins and biscuit barrels even sweeter.

I remember being about four, sneaking into the pick and mix section and pocketing a few sweets, thinking it was a secret game. Even though I had plenty of treats at my grandparents’, my sugar habit seemed bottomless. Later, as a teenager and adult, I often turned to sweets to lift my mood, especially during those stressful afternoons when a packet of wine gums felt like a colourful, chewy rescue.

Over time I started to notice the link between sweets, mood swings and blood sugar. These days, I manage things more mindfully. I can enjoy a treat, especially something made with love, like a slice of my husband’s homemade fruit pie, without sliding into excess. The sweetness feels balanced now, grounded in nourishment and affection rather than craving.

It was lovely to share the sweets Margaret brought, to smell and remember them, even if we all agreed they don’t taste quite the same anymore.

And speaking of nostalgia, here’s an alphabet of sweets to spark a few more memories.

Alphabet of Sweets
Aniseed Balls, Black Jacks, Chew-Its, Dolly Mixtures, Eclairs, Flying Saucers, Gobstoppers, Heroes, Iron Brew Bar, Jelly Babies, Kola Kubes, Love Hearts, Mint Imperials, Nerds, Opal Fruits, Pontefract Cakes, Quality Street, Rolos, Sherbet Dip, Toffees, UFOs, Victory V Lozenges, Wine Gums, Xtreme Sour Belts, Yorkies, Zappers.

Mark Taylor

Other people’s sweets are best. When they eagerly dare you to taste how sour this is; when they pass you an illicit toffee and the naughtiness is sweeter than the sugar; when they offer you a mint on the way out the door, just in case it helps you make a good impression. Other people’s sweets are best: no wonder kids go rattling buckets on Hallowe’en; no wonder the adverts make giving someone a Rolo sound bigger than giving them a kidney. I’m a grown-up now, apparently, and I could take my pay packet and clear the corner shop out of pick ‘n’ mix. Sometimes that appeals. But there’s not much joy in it, like there’s not much joy in reading every message in a roll of Love Hearts to yourself. Other people’s sweets are best, so the best thing to do with my sweets is to give them to other people. Give me a lick of your ice cream and I’ll give you a lick of mine. Who cares if we got the same flavour? It tastes better this way.

Margaret Kendall

Sweets were allowed on Wednesday afternoons when my class walked back up the steep hill from Nelson town centre to my primary school after our swimming class.   I remember sharing fruit gums and Spangles, penny arrows, paper bag twists of kali (a sort of sherbet) and liquorice sticks.  Our route took us near the Fryer & Company’s Victory factory with its distinctive tall chimney: the home of Victory V lozenges.  Sometimes a strong, medicinal smell wafted across.  

I always thought that Victory V gums & lozenges got their name from the Second World war, but when I was getting ready for this Stories of our Lives session, I discovered that they were called after Lord Nelson’s flagship, the Victory.  This was no doubt because during the industrial revolution, the rapidly expanding Lancashire town was re-named Nelson in 1849, after the Lord Nelson pub near the railway station.  Thomas Fryer, a sweet shop owner, began making the medicinal lozenges in 1864 and the factory was built in 1873.  They were marketed as “the sweet with the inner glow” to keep out the cold and were very popular, exported widely around the world and sent in tins to the troops in World War One. I discovered that the original recipe contained ether, chloroform and chlorodyne (which contains opium, cannabis and alcohol!).  My cousin said her other grandmother used to give her half a lozenge and a glass of milk at bedtime & she always slept well when she stayed over! 

The factory finally closed in 1987, and the iconic chimney was demolished the following year.  I was pleased to be able to buy a packet of Victory Vs in the sweet shop in Hawes and taste them again, but they’re now made in Devon and they’re sold as “Original flavour lozenges” containing sugar, acacia gum, linseed oil and artificial flavouring. Still with a strong taste, but without any of the dodgy ingredients used in less regulated times!

A postscript from Nouri Marvi

At the meeting, Nouri talked to us about his love of sweets, especially the Gaz sweets made from nougat and pistachio from his native Iran. The next time we met, he brought a box of them to share with us to celebrate his birthday. They were delicious!