![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAilz was at an old time sweet shop yesterday- where they still sell those mid-twentieth century individually-wrapped sweets- toffees, jube-jubes, sherbert lemons (someone still makes them)- and came back with a jar-full. This led to us discussing sweets in bed- and numbering our favourites. She liked licorice and I liked anything with sherbert in it.
I also liked hard fruit candies- the translucent ones- because they looked like jewels. And I liked some toffees but not others. Peppermints were OK. My mother used to make hard, bonfire-night toffee in trays which spoiled you for anything you could buy in a shop.
Notice I'm writing all this in the past tense. When I stopped eating sweets in adolescence I lost not only the habit, not only the craving, but even the slightest twinge of "Ooh, that looks nice". Maybe it's because I came to associate them with the dentist's chair, but I think not. Sometimes one's tastes just change, irreversably, with the force of a falling portcullis and there's no way back. It makes me wonder whether I ever really liked them or just thought I did- because that's what's expected of children. Maybe the realization that I didn't actually want another toffee- ever again- wasn't so much loss as liberation. I remember I had a sweet jar in my bedroom- and I could be trusted not to empty it at a sitting, just as I could be trusted not to wolf down all my Easter eggs at once. In fact Easter eggs, now I think of it, I used to keep for months, until they went stale, nibbling on a communion wafer-sized piece now and then as if it were a duty.
I also liked hard fruit candies- the translucent ones- because they looked like jewels. And I liked some toffees but not others. Peppermints were OK. My mother used to make hard, bonfire-night toffee in trays which spoiled you for anything you could buy in a shop.
Notice I'm writing all this in the past tense. When I stopped eating sweets in adolescence I lost not only the habit, not only the craving, but even the slightest twinge of "Ooh, that looks nice". Maybe it's because I came to associate them with the dentist's chair, but I think not. Sometimes one's tastes just change, irreversably, with the force of a falling portcullis and there's no way back. It makes me wonder whether I ever really liked them or just thought I did- because that's what's expected of children. Maybe the realization that I didn't actually want another toffee- ever again- wasn't so much loss as liberation. I remember I had a sweet jar in my bedroom- and I could be trusted not to empty it at a sitting, just as I could be trusted not to wolf down all my Easter eggs at once. In fact Easter eggs, now I think of it, I used to keep for months, until they went stale, nibbling on a communion wafer-sized piece now and then as if it were a duty.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 11:37 am (UTC)My mother got me into 'Victory V's' which had been around since her childhood but which I didn't discover til she introduced me to them. Ditto 'milk bottles'!
I was the as you with some toffees and not others...
Maybe I shouldn't tell you this... but... there's an online sweetshop called "A Quarter Of..." that has a lot of these old sweets. I've not yet plucked up courage to order any. I just know I'd be ill... and get fat... and more tooth decay... and... and...
This painting of mine was inspired by the look of sweets and by the look of icecream kiosks:
http://wokenbyart.livejournal.com/tag/candy+sprite
no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 12:37 pm (UTC)Ailz's sweetshop occupies a unit at an old mill in Oswaldstwhistle.
The colour of these things is half the attraction. You've captured it nicely in that painting.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 05:26 pm (UTC)There's an old-fashiened sweetshop in Beaumaris on Anglesey - jars of all kinds of sweets that I haven't seen for years
no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 07:17 pm (UTC)I like my chocolate dark and smooth. The restaurant at the V & A does a little pot of chocolate that represents my ideal.