Ice creams were always wafers, no cones, which were messy once they began to melt. They were made in a special metal gadget; wafer in first, ice cream pressed in, another wafer on top, then a lever was pressed and out it came, ready to eat.
On the other side of the High Street was "Joyce's" which solely sold sweets and ice cream and had the custom of all the village children and must have been a little gold mine. Here you could buy 1, 2 or 3 pennyworth of rainbow crystals. There were crystals of sherbet and kept in a big glass jar in neat layers of red, orange and yellow. Joyce served it into little pointed paper bags with a metal scoop and all the colours got mixed up. We would sometimes have a penny liquorice stick to suck and dip into the crystals, or just dip a wet finger in and suck it. After a few minutes of continual sucking this finger would be stained yellow. She also sold 'flying saucers', made of rice paper filled with sherbert, 2 for a penny, penny liquorice sticks which were small and very hard, not like the liquorice you get now. There were also 2d sherbert fountains, and 1d rolls of tiny sweets. Sometimes I would treat myself to a quarter of Terry's Neopolitan chocolates. These were tiny bars of different flavour chocolate all individually wrapped in different coloured papers and they were very expensive at 10d a quarter. My ambition at one time was to have a sweet shop when I grew up.
Penny Hammill