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24/9/2020 0 Comments

When we were children my sister and I were given shiny sixpences for our pocket money each Saturday morning. That’s 6d not 6p! My Dad used to joke that he’d minted them freshly in his greenhouse, but I knew that he really dug up pennies and halfpennies instead, as they were the same copper-brown colour as the Fenland soil in our vegetable garden.

Obviously, our Saturday afternoon mission was to then spend ever single penny on sweets from the village store which also sold boiled ham and candles. I liked to buy Fruit Salads and Black Jacks as I could get four for a penny and thus twenty-four of the little wrapped sweets in total (‘long multiplication’ always came easier to me than ‘sharing’).

This meant a huge brown paper bag of sweets and, somehow, the time it took me to peel off the papers of each one only served to increase the anticipation of a fruity or aniseed treat. We sell both in our pick n’ mix section in the shop and people usually have a selection of each – a bit like Cherry Lips and Floral Gums.

My sister is four years older than me so used to try and persuade me to buy Lucky Bags instead. Her reasoning was that there would always be something inside that I wouldn’t like … Flying Saucers and Sherbet Fountains quickly became my new favourites – such was my enduring and endearing brand loyalty - and, again, Flying Saucers in particular literally fly off our shelves today.

It’s nice that so many of our playground talking points still come up in conversations in the shop – unlike Spangles or Rickets – and I remember clearly the contents of the Retro Packs of sweets which Michelle makes up, as though none of the fifty years had subsequently come between us.

We had a Great Auntie Minnie who lived a short bus ride away. She was famous for her chunky knitted cardigans in various shades of green, and also frosted glass containers of biscuits that, though we couldn’t see them clearly, were surely soft and probably infested with earwigs as she often left the lids off while she at first listened and then always fell asleep to the Home Service on her transistor radio.

Auntie Minnie also kept about one hundred and sixteen varieties of shortbread in a battered old tin with a lid featuring a faded Scottish scene of stags on high alert and grouse looking dangerously nonchalant – much like the Famous Grouse on our whisky fudge tins and boxes of toffees. One of the fan-shaped types was, she used to tell me in a grand voice like a 1950s BBC radio announcer, ‘petticoat tailed shortbread.’

My sister explained nicely on the way home that all petticoats had tails but that little girls tied them up with colourful rubber bands – a lot like on ponytails – so that little boys couldn’t see them. She was full of tales such as these and, of course, I believed every word she said.

thought of this when our new fairground collection of Christmas tins came in this week, containing petticoat tail shortbread in the form of a Magical Carousel. Thankfully, the Big Wheel and Helter Skelter tins that complete the set contain chocolate chip shortbread and salted caramel fudge. You know where you are with those two, even though they may not conjure up the same magic of childhood.

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17/9/2020 0 Comments

“It takes all sorts!” my Dad used to say - especially when someone had behaved oddly - but then he would do, given his love of Liquorice allsorts.

We still sell lots of those, and Meltis Newberry Fruits too. These were his absolute favourite sweets, or at least he pretended they were on each birthday, Christmas Day and Father’s Day when I just went for the easy option, rather than really thinking about whether he would have preferred something different. I wish I could do something about that now, but the moment has long passed, as has he.

It’s nice to have a very regular reminder of him, though, when someone brings a packet up to the shop counter. We have a sugar-free version now as well. I don’t think he would have taken those lying down…

He would have been exasperated by some of our customers who just hang out in the shop on their mobile ‘phones. I’m afraid we have to move them out again now – like cattle at The High Chaparral ranch – as we need to try and control the floor space available as best we can. Please don’t be offended if this happens to you. We use the lassos quite rarely and Michelle has absolutely banned me from using the electric cattle prod that gave me even more pleasure than watching old westerns on TV.

He would have been very angry at the young boy who reached into our window display from the shop doorway one Sunday afternoon and stole a packet of Sour Patch Kids. Whether referring to it as karma or serendipity, he would have been equally aghast at the boy’s brassy mother who hurled it back loudly into the shop in utter disgust as it was empty (as are all our packets of USA sweets on display in the window). I thought she was going to make some kind of complaint under the 1968 Trade Descriptions Act, but quickly realised that long words like ‘Act’ would have been well beyond her.

Dad would, though, have enjoyed talking with the lovely lady and her daughter who came in for a long chat about the state of retail in modern society between displaying immaculate manners and immaculate taste in chocolate bars. She – the mother and probably the very switched-on daughter in a few years – runs ‘The Rising Sun’ on top of Cleve Hill. We had a day off once and stopped to admire the views from the top of the hill but weren’t aware that you could see the Welsh Mountains as well as Exmoor on a clear day. Mum and Dad both loved Devon so I’m sure he was smiling when she told us this.

He would have loved two of our best (and very funny) friends who come in every Saturday to stock up on their favourite sweets and to fill us in on all the gossip about their wonderful children – whose names I get wrong on a shockingly regular basis. Maurice – or is it Morris, or is it to Peter – is a Manchester United fan but still a very nice guy and we exchange football banter until I happen to notice that the queue of customers is out of the door …

We also enjoy the company of another lovely couple who visit regularly. The man is about my age – a West Ham fan so, again, football discussion is required while I fill his jar with milk chocolate raisins. Each time his wife visited Next, opposite, he would sneak into the shop and we had to pretend that we had never seen him before, whenever she spotted him and stood knowingly in the doorway, tapping her watch like a certain Manchester United manager from the past.

It transpires that she does a lot of home baking and I may once (possibly twice) have mentioned that I’d be happy to sample her wares, prior to them being transported to neighbours or family members and so forth. My selfless offer was rewarded last Sunday when she presented me with a tray of banana muffins, fruit scones and shortbread. What a truly lovely thought! I could have hugged her – but left it to Dad to do so.

Mum and Dad were married for more than sixty years and they were clearly in the shop with me on Tuesday when a nice lady came in to admire our various tins of vanilla fudge. With Christmas approaching we have many beautiful tins and gifts available now, so it took her quite a while – and she was in absolutely no rush. She was an elegant lady, full of smiles, and generous in her praise of our little world. She departed with the words “The sun came out on our wedding day and it hasn’t gone in since.”

As Dad used to say: “it takes all sorts.” I wish more people could be like her… or him.

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10/9/2020 0 Comments

‘Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Martley, Claines, the High Street and Hive…’

You may sort of remember this song by Simon and Garfunkel. It was released in 1966 but is based on an old (or olde if we want some consistency with our shop brand) English folk song from the Fourteenth Century.

Scarborough Fair was itself established in 1253 by a royal charter, granted by King Henry III of England and was actually a huge trading event, held in Scarborough on the east coast of Yorkshire, and lasting for over a month. Traders came from all over northern Europe and sales of seaside rock, well, rocketed.

The song is about unrequited love and it’s hard to get things right at the moment isn’t it? Michelle and I think that Worcester City Council did absolutely the right thing on everyone’s behalf by cancelling this year’s Victorian Christmas Fair (or Fayre…) on safety grounds if nothing else.

Modern-day traders and stallholders will undoubtedly feel the effects. We ran a sweets trailer before opening our shop in Worcester two and a half years ago and know how difficult it is when events are cancelled, especially in terms of cash flow.

Tough love is hard to handle and not everybody agreed with us or the Council. If there had been a spike in virus cases, people would have pointed the finger and asked what on earth the councillors were thinking? If Covid-19 cases somehow dissipate, people will point the finger and ask what on earth the councillors were thinking?

We shall miss the footfall of course and welcoming so many visitors to our sweet shop. Presumably, most of the population of Wales will also miss the excursions to our lovely city that weekend, and write folk songs instead…

Regardless of this news, we are busily planning for Christmas, in the expectation that people will buy their gifts earlier in case of Herodendus problems later. We have two lovely new ranges of chocolates from Ireland and Belgium, and Barkley’s Mints will freshen the breath of even the most overworked of dwarves – and that’s just in our basement.

My favourite flavour of mints (is that a contradiction in terms?) is cinnamon, but I think that has more to do with my memories of Christmas spices in my Mum’s kitchen than my ongoing obsession with rectangular tins.

We also have beautiful new tins of vanilla fudge for horse lovers (not that the fudge needs to be fed to the animals themselves). Various types of our equine friends are featured against a white background and even the ingredients label is styled on a stable door. They are already selling quickly, and I don’t think they will see December unless of course they refuse at the final fence, as I sometimes do.

It feels odd to be planning Christmas in September, but at the same time rather lovely to think of happy times as the winds and chills of autumn take hold. The shop is an especially magical place in the last months of the year and I hope we will be able to stay open for you to enjoy it with us.

Soon after Scarborough Fair was established, plague hit England. The Black Death remains the deadliest pandemic in human history, hugely more costly in human lives than even the ‘Spanish Flu’ of a hundred years ago. Tragically, tens of millions died but, thankfully, some were spared.

‘Are you going to the Worcester Victorian Christmas Fayre?’
Not this year, but hopefully next.

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3/9/2020 0 Comments

We spend a lot of time looking back, don’t we? I suppose that’s one of the big reasons why a sweet shop like Mr Simms Worcester is so appealing!

Many, many of our customers come in simply to reminisce about our dozens of jars of colourful boiled sweets, jellies, toffees and liquorice, while attempting in vain to persuade their young children that a Sherbet Lemon is a far better option than Toxic Waste, or that Pineapple Rock will last longer in the memory than a Pez Dispenser…

But what of looking forward – especially at what seem like important crossroads in Worcester, UK and world history.

It’s 32 years ago today that Michelle and I decided on a single path in life and got married. The ceremony took place in a little monastery tucked away in the Northumberland Hills, but she meant the world to me that day, and still does.

To celebrate, our three children clubbed together – how I miss the days when they would club each other in the sandpit with any weapon they could lay their collective hands on – to buy us a gift card for the Miller & Carter Steakhouse on Cathedral Square. Over sumptuous steaks and prosecco (it was Thursday after all!) we looked back over our life together, but probably spent more time looking ahead to adventures still to come.

We had to order our Christmas stock last week and obviously hope that after the floods, storms, lingering virus and predicted plagues of locusts from Belgium - should a Brexit Trade Deal not be agreed in time – we will have a more successful period.

We have been in Worcester for two and a half years now. It was always our ambition to work together one day and that is why we took early retirement to open our little shop. If you have a life partner, then uncertainty seems far easier to deal with and our kettle never runs cold.

On the big questions of the day there is plenty of the unknown to go around. Will the BBC eventually find the words to explain why it thought it had a right to re-write Elgar’s masterpiece, or that it could not be re-purposed for all of us in a multi-cultural society? Will the new Gold Digger film production company in California have any chance of success without Meghan’s acting? Will we ever be able to stock sour Blue Raspberry Stars ever again?

Uncertainty can certainly make us feel anxious or it can be embraced and seen for the positive outcomes that might result, rather than necessarily negative ones that come to mind more easily. Each time I look up at the wonderful light over the Malverns in the evening sky, or feel the sun’s warmth on the back of my neck as I walk along Worcester High Street every morning, I am reassured that everything is as it was always meant to be.

We can usually tell if families are ‘happy’ and forward-looking or not, without reverting to that card game we enjoyed as children. There have been lots of children visiting the shop with their parents over the Bank Holiday weekend and most have been an absolute pleasure.

One man swore out loud at me when I told him he couldn’t bring his dog into our sweet shop; another twenty-something told me that sucralose (used in many of our sugar-free sweets) was actually sugar in disguise, and a young lad scowled when I drew the line at counting 20 Smarties into his pick n’ mix bag (after one cola bottle, two white mice, one cherry and three strawberries), but, in general people have been relaxed with each other - happy in each other’s company - and therefore warm and friendly towards us.

Our neighbour’s husband died last week. He was 82 but his wife had looked after him for the 27 years since he had a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. I know that Michelle would do exactly the same for me, and I for her. It is a sweet feeling when you can look forward openly and honestly, no matter how lovely the past might have been, and however tempting it is to return to it.

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I am a writer and historian with a passion for sweets and football (not necessarily in that order!). I write fiction and non-fiction and, after working in the media for over 30 years, now run a sweet shop with my wife, Michelle, trading as Mr Simms Worcester. I also write about the history of sweets in a series of blog posts: 'A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Sweet Shop.'

Our shop is situated on the corner of Worcester's High Street and Fish Street - hence the title of this blog. I will be writing a weekly piece on thoughts and developments both in the world of sweets, the High Street and Worcestershire in general. All thoughts are my own.

YOUR CART

A view from the corner shop

A trip down Petticoat Lane

All kinds of people

Are you going?

Looking forward

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