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| a still from Teddy Gray's Sweet Factory, a 20-min film by Martin Parr about one of the last old sweet factories (click link to watch) |
Are you like me and now believe that the Internet more or less mirrors reality, that everything is 'out there' somewhere, if you can just find the right search terms to put into Google?
Up until now, the only thing I can think of that I couldn't find any reference to online was the 'curse' I have to say every time I see a lone magpie: 'Evil be to thee, good be unto me, get thee gone where thee should be'. Surely I can't be the only person to say this, or even the only person to mention it online? (Having just searched again, I still didn't find it but found instead the tradition of saying 'Devil, devil, I defy thee!' to lone magpies, which must surely be related?)
Now I've found something else dear to my heart which almost no one else seems to remember: Parkinson's Fruit Thins. I must have eaten a hundredweight of these in the course of my childhood. They were beautiful, individually wrapped, inch-square thin panes of boiled sugar. The shape just didn't fit comfortably in your mouth and that was a great part of the pleasure, somehow: pressing the four corners up into the tender roof of your mouth with your tongue or using it to lacerate your cheek when it got to a wafer.
I've been haunting one or two vintage confectionery sites (such as
A Quarter of) for years, waiting in vain for my favourite square (or, in fact, slightly rectangular) sweets to reappear.
The photo above is the only one I've found that might possibly show an early version of Thins. Otherwise,
nada. Then my latest
fruitless search brought a mention of Thins by food-hedonist Nigel Slater, who includes them in his new book,
Eating for England:
This is the reference, close up:
Just me and Nigel dreaming of Thins, then? I share his nostalgia for sweet shop sweeties and would urge you to watch
Martin Parr's short film about Teddy Gray's old-fashioned sweet factory.
Talking of nostalgia, I've absolutely loved the comments on
my last post, about saveloys and pease pudding. Jane from
Jeeandme shared memories of eating many of the same foods as me growing up in Bristol, altering my picture of the North-East having been a culinary law unto itself. She also remembered eating pigs' trotters, stuffed hearts, faggots and chitterlings. I think I got away lightly.
Lesley at
Printed Material remembered making rollmops but hankers after Farley's Rusks! Some kind of regression thing going on there, maybe, Lesley? Like me with Heinz tomato soup poured on top of a pile of buttered bread cut up into little squares so it makes a bowl of red mush.
Cathy at
Me... Musing amazingly shares my love of Fray Bentos pies but admits to a thing for Spam and those (sorry) horrible little sausages in tins of Heinz baked beans. Let's not even start on Campbell's meatballs (except to say that Campbell's was too posh for our house...).
Joanna at
Fiddlesnips! remembers eating beef dripping on toast -- me too! Unbelievable, isn't it? Did you also get to scoop out the marrow from the end of the lamb joint on a Sunday with the wrong end of a teaspoon? Shovel on the salt... mmm.
Finally, Jill at
Third Age Musings wrote what I can only describe as a love poem to Golden Syrup and sugar. Me too! Do
you sneak a slurp straight out of the squeezy bottle when no one's looking? Syrup on fried rounds of suet, syrup on Yorkshire puddings, bananas dipped in sugar, tomatoes sprinkled with sugar (me, only when cooking them), and sandwiches made with lettuce, sugar and vinegar -- but that combo is what we used to call 'Yorkshire salad' and we had it every week with our Sunday joint, except that I always shunned it as I didn't like the combination of hot and cold on the same plate.
I leave you with the memory of Chocolate Lovelies which you were supposed to defrost but which I always ate frozen, and lemon Choc Top yoghurts, which I loved even though the 'choc top' was just a thin layer of fatty stuff on top of an indifferent yoghurt. So bad it was good...
And the best chocolate bar EVER:
