Sweets

Every Saturday when my sister and I went to the Public Library we were given one old penny to buy what my mother referred to as 'rubbish sweets'. which made them all the more desirable to us!

Acceptable were things like Fry's Five Boys chocolate bars, with the 5 images impressed into the chocolate. We hankered after Penny Pink Shrimps, Flying Saucers with their rice paper shell, Black Jacks, Colts Foot, Liquorice Root and many other dubiously coloured sweets. My sister favoured sherbet dips in a yellow paper tube and the soft liquorice stick for 'dabbing' Me - I loved cinder toffee in the blue and white waxed paper wrapper... but that was 2D.

Of course the sweeties shop also had the big glass jars of sweets bought by the quarter, or even in ounces - Sour Plums, Lemon Sherbet, Rhubarb and Custard, Everton Mints, Black Bullets - all sold in a white paper bag. We rarely had bought sweets like these, but Mum made toffee and fudge herself. I can conjure up the vinegar smell of her toffee, and remember well stirring in Carnation Evaporated Milk to make fudge.

Dorne Coggins