Sugar and Mice and Everything Nice

Brits over a certain age, like to reminisce about the sweet shops they used to visit when they were children. Today, almost everything is pre-packaged, but back then, a weekly treat was a visit to the local Sweet Shop, where, if you were lucky, your mother might let you choose a quarter of sweets from one of the jars lined up on shelves behind the counter. Pineapple cubes, lemon sherberts, pear drops and rhubarb & custards were some of my favourites. And of course, the pink sugar mice. No wonder the British have a reputation for bad teeth!

These days, old fashioned sweet shops are few and far between. My mother actually grew up in the sweet shop my grandmother owned in a little West Country village called Berkeley (that's pronounced Bar-klee, not Burr-Klee as people round here would probably try to call it). When I was a little girl we went back and visited the shop that had once been their home and I was allowed to buy sweets there. But business must have been slow. The cute shop, with its quirky bow-windowed front door was eventually closed down and is now just another house on the street.

Recently, on a trip to the tourist destination of Cheddar famous for it's caves and its cheese, we found a little Sweet Kitchen where they still make candies by hand and invite customers to come in and watch.









The little pink mouse is living in my fridge (safely hidden away from where ants might sniff him out). Cute as he is, I just can't bring myself to eat him...





posted in Food and Sweets and Candy and England and Cheddar

Sugar and Mice and Everything Nice