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10/12/2020 0 Comments

Christmas is a time for messaging, isn’t it?

Mary received a message from Gabriel in her little village of Nazareth, way off the beaten track, and shared the Good News with her relative Elizabeth in Judah who, in turn, confirmed her own surprising and glorious news.

Three Wise Men saw messages in the alignment of the stars and were led by the brightest in the universe. The birth of Jesus Christ was heralded by choirs of angels and we continue that tradition today.

But, of course, the story wasn’t quite that straightforward for Joseph and Mary.

Thanks to local government paranoia over their unelected power, and access to an early bureaucratic machine, our two leading characters had to travel many miles in order to be counted as human beings. Mary was pregnant and had to endure what must have been unimaginable hardship, while Joseph – as all expectant fathers will relate to – must have been worried to the core of his soul about the forthcoming delivery, no matter that God had assured him that all would work out in the end.

Even the accommodation was problematic with no room and no sympathy for their plight aside from an innkeeper who showed decency and kindness in a challenging situation.

I was thinking about all of this today and how much we have really moved forward.

Messaging is big business now but I’m not sure that the message is considered as important, or thoughtful or relevant as the channel or device used to send it. Many people in our shop this week have been full of doom and gloom and cannot see any good news beyond the next downbeat TV bulletin reporting on the mixed messages coming out of government.

My glass is always half full, and I do try to be funny and positive with all our visitors – especially those who need cheering up a bit.

One elderly lady – who is a very regular customer - told me yesterday that her beloved cat had recently died. I was suitably concerned but she quickly brushed my sympathy aside by announcing that at least now she would have all the chocolate peanuts to herself …

A much older man had tears in his eyes when what little light was left in them landed on a jar of Chocolate Limes. He then spent over half-an-hour telling us how, as a little boy, his mother would feed him these in their Anderson shelter during the war to keep him quiet. He said that he later realized that they weren’t treats so much as little pieces of hope amid the terror: that when the deafening blasts from the bombs had subsided, their little house might still be there when they climbed back into their garden.

Even though we were really busy at the time, we listened until he had finished, whereupon he wished us a Happy Christmas and, with a cheery wave from the doorway, he disappeared into the night once more. A little beacon of light where too many others see only darkness.

A number of our suppliers have failed to heed the Christmas or any other kind of message since I wrote to you last. Sweets have failed to appear on time or at all and terse conversations have centred on the ‘small print’ or the buck passed to delivery drivers who have allegedly been ‘too lazy’ to deliver.

I wonder what would have happened in Bethlehem if the Health and Safety police had pointed out that, in the small print, sleeping in a stable was absolutely out of the question, while contact with animals forbidden unless you could show official papers proving that you were vegan?

What if Mary’s donkey had simply given up through exhaustion or the unreasonable number of miles expected to be covered being cited by Joseph as gross mismanagement worthy of redundancy with a large pension and a luxury yacht on the Sea of Galilee?

Many of the drivers who deliver to us have to take all the flack for others’ over promising on stock and timings. They are, almost without exception, exhausted, yet they must listen to customers’ complaints without being able to answer back.

We give them little bags of sweets as small recompense for trying their best on our behalf. It’s a little bit of kindness but, I hope, a much bigger message of reassurance: we are all in this together.

No matter how bad things are, I prefer to remember the words of the late and mighty Stephen Hawking, who was a scientist but also as sensitive to the strengths and weaknesses of humankind as any student of religion:

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet… however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

We won’t give up and we will always listen to your stories and receive your messages with open hearts – not just at Christmas but every day.

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3/12/2020 0 Comments

It’s been a while hasn’t it?

For some reason which may be explained only by top neuro-psychologists with less hair than me, the second lockdown seemed much longer than the first, in spite of it forcing us to close for four weeks rather than eleven.

Maybe it was the timing? Just after we put the clocks back, we were forced into darkness whereas spring was only just beginning last time around. Could it be that – like most other independent retailers I expect – November was possibly the worst month for us to be closed as the run in to Christmas really begins with the October half-term, and so seemed to drag on and on and on?

Perhaps our anxiety was heightened this time because of the land grabs of other, larger retailers and garden centres who saw opportunities to make hay while the sun faded and sold many of the same items that we do because they somehow bent the rules on what was essential and what wasn’t? Maybe we just don’t know enough important people or had insufficient cash to grease the right palm trees?

Either way, let’s hope the vaccine approval really is the beginning of the end rather than yet another end of us beginning to get back on our feet again.

We were overwhelmed by the level of local support we received from Worcester City Council, Worcester BID and our lovely, loyal customers throughout Worcestershire who looked at the brochure pages on this website and ordered via email or telephoned us directly. As we did last time, we delivered throughout the city and sent packages much further afield via UPS and the Royal Mail.

A large number of you also clicked and collected which was great as it also gave us the opportunity to have the kinds of chats we have so missed, also checking up on each other’s health and well-being – which, in our humble opinions, is really what being part of a community hub should be all about, not naked greed.

We re-opened yesterday and many of you have already been in to say ‘hello.’ This means everything to us, and Michelle and I will be there every day now until Christmas Eve. We had to make three of our four permanent members of staff redundant after the first lockdown, so thermos flasks are charged and ready to go!

One young lad did ask us today if we would be open for 24 hours. I responded by asking him if he really expected people to come down to the High Street at 2.00 in the morning to buy bonbons. Worryingly, he said no but that Sour Patch Kids might be a different proposition altogether… I left it at that; besides, which Michelle often snores so that wouldn’t be great for business anyway.

We have rearranged our shop a little bit – not only to display our various Christmas offerings but also repurposed our Sweet Lorry range of themed hampers to make them more accessible. One consequence of this is that we can have slightly more people in the shop in terms of the social distancing/square footage equation.

However, if we have more than about eight people in the shop I’m afraid we will still have to ask you to form an orderly queue outside (or disorderly queue if you’ve previously partaken of our Guinness or Bailey’s chocolate range).

We still have a lot of Christmas stock available but it’s going very quickly, despite us also being two reindeer down after an unfortunate incident with Dasher and Prancer and the heat-sealing machine …

Obviously, because of all the uncertainty out there we bought less Christmas stock than usual - especially with the Christmas Fayre being cancelled this year - so it’s a case of grab it while you can!

For those of you still shielding or simply preferring not to shop when others are around, just contact us and we will happily arrange for a private shopping session at a time that works for us both.

We will of course be wearing our Christmas jumpers for the next 21 days so do come in for a chat and be part of our little festive bubble. I may even be singing Christmas songs so do not be put off if Michelle is wearing headphones shaped as elves’ ears.

We really missed all of you and it feels great to be back.

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11/11/2020 1 Comment

So, we’re one week into the latest ‘national lockdown’ unless you live in Wales or Scotland when being part of the Union seems more akin to the title of a Strawbs song than any kind of de jure existence.

It feels quite different to the previous lockdown doesn’t it? There are more people about generally, and a far greater volume of traffic on the roads than in March or April. I think there is a definite perception out there that we are somehow less at risk than we were in the spring.

But we are. The virus draws no political, geographical, financial or social boundaries and we all remain at risk of losing our lives or those of our friends and loved ones. I was thinking about this at 11 o’clock this morning when remembering my Grandad and all of those who gave their lives or were permanently damaged by the horrors of war.

Whenever I feel a bit grumpy about the situation (which thankfully isn’t often as I am positive and optimistic by nature) I say a quiet ‘thank you’ for my being born in this country, in this generation rather one of the millions of young men who were quite simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I never forget this, nor them.

We have been delivering sweets and gifts around Worcester, from Claines to Kempsey, St John’s to St Peter’s – we never really stopped doing this after we were able to re-open the shop in June and will probably always offer this service now. The reactions from people on their doorsteps have been lovely to behold, especially when we reach the correct destinations.

Gift packages with special messages are really nice to deliver and it has made me feel even more Christmas-like than before. I did consider harnessing the reindeer to the Volvo, but Michelle has politely but firmly reminded me that we have hybrid versions this year and that they will need to remain plugged into the mains until Christmas week.

People can also email or ‘phone us and we will either deliver directly (or via the Post Office or UPS if further afield) or people can collect from the shop on Worcester High Street. We also offer doorstep sales from the shop from 12.00 to 4.00 in the afternoons from Thursday to Sunday. I’ve lost count of how many doorsteps we’ve actually sold, as well as how many times I can use the word ‘from’ in a single paragraph; but it’s quite a lot.

It’s been interesting to see how people describe sweets – especially when they have no visual clues to rely on when in the shop itself. We’ve always had a fair few customers who use a kind of charades technique when trying to choose sweets: ‘two words, sounds like wheat sweeteners’ (Barley Sugars); ‘small, round and brown’ (squares of Vanilla Fudge); ‘definitely blue, soft and fruity’ (red Pineapple Rock).

Lockdown has given us a new series of lowdowns:

‘You know, the one that looks like rabbit droppings’ (Chewing Nuts)
‘We went to the zoo and had to feed the giraffes… looks like giraffe food’ (Chocolate Nibbs)
‘The dog chews; the ones I ate before’ (Caramello Liquorice Sticks)
‘The blue and pink ones I always manage to extract from the centres of the Catherine Wheels’ (Jelly Spogs)

It’s as though customers think we are sitting beside them as they eat their sweets and that we will somehow know their tastes and understand their foibles – some of which make us laugh out loud; others make us feel afraid, very afraid …

Choosing Pick n’ Mix has taken this to a whole new level:

‘She only eats the round, multi-coloured swirly things’ (Rotella)
‘The little babies that have turned blue’ (Sour Blue Raspberry Babies)
‘I need a small handful of Mini Eggs, a much larger handful of Bananas, and seven Jelly Babies.’

In whichever way people manage to explain what it is they’d like and however long it takes, we are truly grateful to all those who are going out of their way to support us: The family who came down an otherwise deserted High Street on Sunday, in the pouring rain, to pick up their regular bags of jellies; the elderly lady in a wheelchair who handed us a bag of coins ‘because I really don’t want you to go anywhere’ and the gentleman who was ‘just passing’ and bought several packets of fudge (we later found out he had come into Worcester to pick something up from work, made a beeline for us and then went straight home again).

We thank you all and thank our lucky stars (chocolate or jelly) that we are still here to tell these tales.

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5/11/2020 0 Comments

Locked down but certainly not locked out

I woke up with a smile on my face this morning. Now, some of you may think that had something to do with Michelle and a feather but no, even on the first day of another lockdown, I remain positive about the future.

Despite the incoherent, inconsistent and ultimately indecisive way in which ‘professional advisers’ are now running our country, I refuse to get upset.

Even after reading that ‘all departments’ of our local garden centre are open for business as usual; as with most garden centres a tiny part is actually outside - for the purchase of Christmas trees if people are feeling hardy (or festive) enough – whereas most ‘departments’ are retail shops that sell a huge range of gifts and sweets: and yet our little family-owned retail shop was told it had to close. We are certainly not seen as essential and not really very important at all. Perhaps I should revise my green credentials on the grounds of unnatural bias?

But no, I’m not going to allow myself to become downhearted. One reason is due to the overwhelming support of the local community we so wanted to be a small part of. Worcester BID have always been good friends to our small business, and never more so than now.

The many messages of support from our loyal customers have meant the world to us and already been backed up by orders. We have been delivering around Worcester this morning and already have more lined up for tomorrow. Please do look at our website pages to remind yourselves of all the non-essential items you know you love really!

We will be doing deliveries around Worcester throughout November – all for free on orders of £10.00 or more. You can also send emails on mrsimmsworcester@gmail.com and we’ll either bring sweets and gifts to you, or have your collection waiting for you at the shop.

I’m afraid you won’t be able to come into the shop itself but we can have a chat on the doorstep about the price of fish and sweets. You may be asked security questions along the lines of ‘We all love Leeds United because … ‘ but otherwise it should be a friendly and relatively pain-free process.

If you’re just taking a walk along Worcester High Street and fancy a sweet takeaway, knock on the door or just yell through the letterbox and we’ll come out and serve you your favourites or any gifts or tins you might have seen in our Christmas window.

We plan to do takeaway sales and collections from Noon to 4.00 PM on Thursday to Sunday each week but this will depend on footfall, and we’ll keep everyone updated via our Facebook page.

A second reason to be cheerful is that our online brand – The Sweet Lorry – is doing well. You can look at our beautiful range of themed hampers and gift boxes, order online and have them delivered via UPS or Royal Mail anywhere in the UK. You can include personalised messages though any addressed to a ‘Boris Johnson’ or ‘Michael Gove’ will incur severe penalty charges I’m afraid.

The third and main reason for our positive outlook – at all times - is, of course, the knowledge that we are fit and healthy and of sound mind (most of the time!). Michelle and I do fret about the future but we love and cherish each other every day ‘in sickness and in health’ as we have done for the last 32 years.

Others are not nearly so fortunate. Anxiety is a corrosive force that breeds on uncertainty and insecurity at times like this. Lonely people go missing mentally often long before they do so physically, and we should help each other – by listening to people’s stories, as we love to do in our shop – and not being so quick to judge others who may be really struggling.

In this context we are delighted to have adopted West Mercia Search & Rescue (WMSAR) as our local charity for the year ahead. We loved working with Deaf Direct – and still have many customers who are hard of hearing and first discovered us via a lovely evening of ‘private shopping’ to which they were invited. Similarly, New College Worcester staff were great to work with and the braille lists of sweets we created for their students are used by those with visual impairments in our shop almost every week.

West Mercia Search & Rescue is a volunteer, charitable organisation, with members donating their time and expertise for free, supporting the community where we live, especially Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. We are truly humbled by the work they do and look forward to supporting both the organisation and the outstanding individuals within it who give so much, so selflessly.

We are not lost and we have not lost. We carry on!

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28/10/2020 0 Comments

Dreaming of a Bright Christmas

As a sweet shop we obviously attract children of all ages, fascinated by the shapes and colours of Toxic Waste, Hubba Bubba, Tango Spray, Pez, Brain Licker and Fizz Wiz that form an essential part of the sweet dictionary of childhood.

Most children are as excited as I was when first confronted by Sherbet Fountains, Lucky Bags and Spangles, though it can present quite a choice to be made.

We are extremely patient with children (and parents!) when waiting for them to choose from 80 pots of Pick n’ Mix sweets, and never rush them unless there is a big queue forming. It’s a bit more difficult at the moment with us having to restrict numbers of people in the shop, but we do try to give them time and space if we can.

Yesterday a little girl told me proudly – and very confidently - all about her first term at big (Primary) school (everything is relative in a child’s eyes!) and how her teacher told her she was really good at colouring. I am expecting proof of this talent in the weeks ahead but haven’t yet told her that I will only be accepting signed copies.

This has been effectively the first half-term week of the year for us as February saw much of Worcester flooded and May saw pretty much nothing at all. Many really friendly families have visited us – either keen to enjoy some welcome space and fresh air together – or visiting friends and family in the Worcestershire area while they still can.

People have been buying Christmas presents since early September and many of our latest visitors have looked at our Christmas brochure online beforehand and have been attracted to the range of Christmas gifts we are offering once again. I’m pleased to say that our beautiful new Sweet Lorry hampers have also been selling well.

Christmas jumpers will soon be out to match those of our Cats and Dogs who are also sporting rather fetching pullovers on our tubes of biscuits. We may even sing carols (though ‘cats' chorus’ may be a more appropriate description of this than a harmony of voices).

We have been inundated with mice once again and, for those who have liked our page on Facebook, there is an online competition to guess how many sugar mice we sold on the run up to Christmas last year. Sadly, cats are unable to participate as they skew the numbers somewhat.

Indeed, this week’s View is a day early than usual. For those who put their clocks back by 24 hours instead of one, it may not have been noticed at all, but I mention it as a courtesy to everyone else. Tomorrow evening we are putting our new Christmas window together (no nails, no putty) as well as decorations and lights around the shop.

Like the children we are, we are dreaming of a bright, if not white Christmas and we see our window as an extension of all our hopes and dreams for the future, as well as a trip back to happy times for everyone looking in. We can’t wait for you to see it, or for us to see you.

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22/10/2020 1 Comment

Don't just go to work on an egg, be the egg

As many of you may already know there is a biennial literature prize which is awarded to writers who have taken on themes of human freedom and what it means as part of society. The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society was awarded, in 2009, to Haruki Murakami.

In his acceptance speech he declared that ““If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals ... We must not let the system control us - create who we are. It is we who created the system.”

I have been mindful of this thought this week as so many people have come into the sweet shop, apparently flattened by what the government is doing to combat COVID-19 or flattened by what it isn’t doing. There is also a rather tired acceptance – or at least an understanding – that they know best.

I’m not sure that this is the case. Certainly, central government looked after us during the spring lockdown but the new owners of our franchise chose that very moment to compete with us on a far-from-level playing field, and our landlords accepted every penny of rent as usual, without a murmur of support. Thankfully, there are a lot of eggs working in Worcester City Council and Worcester BID who, like us, are equally determined not to be beaten by a system of disease.

Through it all, we remain eggs. We observe and take note. The old lady who comes in with more purses than there are layers in a Russian doll, who only buys Chocolate Limes; the very forthright man who regularly buys five Chocolate Brazils, and the lovely couple who buy a quarter of Jelly Babies (the proper ones, mind) almost every week. To the outside world – to the system – these people are different somehow. They don’t quite fit because they are happy to be eggs – and we applaud each and every one of them.

Even the lady who stood on our front door mat this afternoon and thought that we were mad to ask her to wear a face mask. Suddenly extremely angry, she told us we were ‘f***ing weirdos,’ tried to overturn our jar of Blackpool Rock and stormed off. Yes, she had issues, but she was still an egg - a real person not just some unfortunate statistic.

We see ourselves very much as independent people – both in our business and as forward-thinkers. With such low footfall on Worcester’s High Street currently, the walls do indeed seem high … but not insurmountable. We have developed a new online company – The Sweet Lorry – which delivers themed hampers of gifts such as The Gin and Lime, The Coffee Pot and The Family Affair, in beautiful gift boxes and wicker hampers.

As eggs, we may well be smashed against the walls of financial ruin but better that than allowing our four walls to form a prison cell.

This is also why we always endeavour to cater for individual needs. Anyone coming in and starting a conversation with “this might be a silly question but …” is an egg; an ally against the system of sameness and conformity (unless of course they’re misguidedly looking for bleach or puncture repair kits).

We pride ourselves on our huge collection of vegetarian and vegan sweets; of gluten-free and dairy-free options. We made up a large jar of vegan sweets for a customer this morning, and an even larger one of Peppermint Creams this afternoon. It’s what we do. and the walls of our shop will only close in on us through the collective will of others that we cannot control.

Though it is hard we must accept that those who are privileged and much too grand to grace a sweet shop – or walk around with an elevated air of distaste when they do – will prefer to poach their own nest eggs, while ordinary people like us boil over with rage. They too are individuals and making the system work for them, and them alone.

As Haruki reminded us, we created the system and must not simply allow it to control us. Observe guidelines, certainly; do not flout the rules wilfully, and never assume that misfortune that strikes a fellow egg could not affect you. But please don't give up on freedom of thought either. What would we talk about in the shop otherwise?

‘Go to work on an egg’ was the strapline of an advertising campaign by the Egg Marketing Board in the 1950s and 60s. The proposition was that having an egg for breakfast, with all its inherent goodness, was the best way to start a working day. Interestingly, in the ‘politically correct’ system of 2007 a plan to bring the adverts back was rejected because they didn’t promote a varied diet.

I say that variety is good, but do not throw the egg out with the boiling water from the pan. Being an individual is fine by us. Don’t just go to work on an egg, be the egg.

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15/10/2020 0 Comments

‘Christmas is coming
And with Boris getting fat,
Many people are asking
If there will still be an old man’s hat’

The short answer to that is that I think there still will be but, sadly, less old men this year and I fear that their hats may contain too many holes to contain pennies.

It’s been a really tough time for all of us, hasn’t it but, especially, for older people who remember when Dominic was a saint not a sinner, when dip dabs did not mean embezzlement, and when visors were only worn for riveting entertainment.

The older generation have generally worked hard all their lives and just want to enjoy themselves now – perhaps indulge in a few treats that they may have forsaken for so many years in order to give their children the very best of everything.

So many older ladies and gentlemen enter our sweet shop and are taken back to a time before children – when they were children themselves – and many still retain that sense of fun. For others, life and the virus threatening to end it, are clearly all-consuming. We worry with them because it could also spell the end of our little shop.

So, why don’t we all follow the advice of Wordsworth, in one of my favourite odes:

‘Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass; of glory in the flower,
We shall grieve not – rather find
Strength in what remains behind.’

Christmas is, of course, a great reminder that there is always hope, if only we can keep faith in a better future for all of us.

I’m pleased to say that Christmas has arrived at number 97a High Street as Worcester’s customers look to buy their presents and stocking-fillers earlier than ever, and the reindeer too have delivered our Christmas stock early. They will also deliver it to you if you wish (and have an ongoing supply of carrots).

Have a look at our Christmas brochure and you will see what we have to offer. As regular visitors to the shop will know, we have quite quickly become a gift shop that also sells sweets, as opposed to a sweet shop that also sells a few gifts from time to time.

Beautiful red Robin tins of vanilla fudge arrived this morning (though I understand that Batman is feeling a bit pushed out and currently taking legal advice from his lawyers in Gotham City on exclusion grounds).

We also have beautiful Snowmen and Stargazer tins of vanilla fudge, though I refer to the latter as ‘The John Lewis tin’ after their 2013 Christmas ‘Bear and the Hare’ advertising campaign which is, to date, their most successful ever.

I also consider Stargazer to be a track on my Rainbow Rising album from 1976 which I sometimes place on the turntable and play at maximum volume when Michelle is safely outside, working hard in the garden.

If it’s shortbread you’re after, then reindeer, sheep and Scottie dogs will be happy for you to take them for a walk.

Those loving chocolate in solid or liquid form are well served, while fudge and alcohol prove again what a fantastic combination they truly are.

We have jellies, toffee slabs and hampers of all your favourites which we hope will bring some respite from the cold winds from the north.

‘If you can’t afford the sweet things
Then a cheerful wave will do.
If you can’t find it within yourself to smile,
Then may God bless you.’

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8/10/2020 0 Comments

As some of you may remember from one of my earliest posts, I have been known to sometimes listen to Val Doonican records …

For those of you still reading, I’ll continue.

I suppose the word ‘records’ ages me somewhat as so much music is streamed these days isn't it? Or at least in CD format. I still love putting vinyl on the turntable though and being connected via the stylus to a completely different world.

A lot of our visitors and customers obviously feel the same way when walking into our little sweet shop as it takes them back to their own childhoods but also the stories told to them by parents or grandparents who have long since left the stage.

They tell us about money saved on bus fares and invested wisely on Refresher Chews. One lady bought £10 of them this morning and promised faithfully to ration her haul to one per week – as though we were going to check up on her!

Liquorice Catherine Wheels evoke a lot of memories that just keep coming around, and those seeking Liquorice Root Sticks are as thrilled to find them as the Tudors must have been when using them as toothbrushes.

It’s nice to share fond experiences of sweets that really remind us about people. It’s not nearly so much fun when people remind us that experiences can be equally sour.

On Saturday morning a fairly elderly man refused to come into the shop while a couple of other people were inside. We do monitor numbers closely at this time but usually consider that if the rule of six is prescribed by highly paid civil servants then it’s probably good enough for us. Anyway, he and a young boy only entered when the shop was completely empty.

He proceeded to tell us how we didn’t care about our customers; didn’t understand how long two metres actually was (again, we thought the suits in their London clubs had agreed to one metre being the standard, yet we still mark our floor out in quadrants of two square meters), and that, cheerfully, we would shortly be closed down.

He concluded his treatise by informing us in a commanding voice that he was a special advisor to an important government department in London, as though this would render us silent in breathless awe and servitude.

Michelle and I aren’t really like that. We pointed out quietly that although he observed merely a shop girl and boy in front of him, we did in fact have four degrees between us – including a Master’s degree each – were members of Mensa and spent many years living in and working for major national companies in London, before starting up our own businesses - therefore we did have some small idea of what we were doing ...

Even if he had listened for more than a second, our messages were quickly drowned out in his head by him then shouting at the top of his voice that he ‘didn’t want an argument.’ I can understand that; I’m quite sure that he wasn’t used to people arguing with him.

I actually felt very sorry for the little boy who turned out to be his son, and who just wanted a bag of Jelly Brains from the Pick n’ Mix counter.

Later the same day a middle-aged man and his wife bought one of our lovely new Big Wheel tins of salted caramel fudge. It was for his 97-year old father’s birthday. I was happy to explain how the other fairground tins in this collection – the Carousels and the Helter Skelter - contained shortbread or English toffees, but it was the Big Wheel he particularly wanted.

He explained, a little tearfully, that his father was blind and less concerned about the contents yet would love to run his hands over his birthday present to remind himself of the shape of a Big Wheel at the fairground he loved to visit when he was just a small boy. I wish I could have asked his father about the sweets he might also have enjoyed in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

As Val sang in his version of the classic:
“One little fellow is friends with the wind in the willows
All of them children and all are mysterious people”

Finally, I’ve had a lot of nice comments regarding last week’s blog about animals in the shop. Can I just update you to say that we have now added Scottie dogs and sheep in shortbread tin form; also, to reassure some readers, no animals were hurt in the making of this sweet life.

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1/10/2020 0 Comments

Napoleon once described us as a ‘nation of shopkeepers.’ I don’t think he was being complimentary about our lovely window displays or back wall of brightly coloured boiled sweets in jars.

I also don’t believe his observation was accurate – much like his view that snow in Russia would soon melt or that the ‘wondergrow’ Weetabix breakfasts he enjoyed each morning would eventually work.

My own view is that we are a nation of animal lovers. I was reflecting on this as we drove into Worcester today. The early autumnal sunshine was beaming through the once green leaves of the trees, preparing for change as is the rest of the country beyond the countryside.

Michelle reminded me that we are now in October and that we’d soon have to be watchful for deer suddenly appearing out of foggy mornings. When I eventually emerged from my personal foggy start, I was reminded of how many animals we offer shelter to in our sweet shop.

Micky’s Garden Party is a beautiful tin of mini chocolate chip shortbread and features a little cat and a dog having fun in a hammock! We also provide lovely vanilla fudge tins for those wanting to thank neighbours or friends for looking after their cat or dog. One gentleman visitor from Italy was most upset last summer when I couldn’t offer him a ‘thank you for looking after my goldfish’ variant. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was being ironic or deadly serious, but haven’t woken to a dead fish or horse’s head on my pillow lately so hopefully his pets survived his absence.

On the subject of horses, we have a very nice new tin of vanilla fudge featuring different types of equine beast. The Mustang is my favourite but probably only because it reminds me of a road trip from New York to Toronto many years ago …

We have farmyard boxes of chocolates and tins of jelly beans, featuring pigs and sheep and cows (try not to mention Moo Free to them though as it makes them unsettled) , and also a new forest tin which highlights foxes, badgers and, well, deer.

Pink Pigs and swine formerly known as Percy also feature in our pick n’ mix selection, and marshmallow pigs and cats often feature in our lollipop range. Sheep also flock to our shop in chocolate or lollipop form. Charles the Spaniel is a regular chocolate figure in these parts, as are hedgehogs and, inevitably, cats, also in liquorice form.

Our cats actually do rather well in the shop and we often come in to find Cheshire grins being sported all over the shop, as we do have a lot of mice (or did!) – psychedelic mice, white mice, sugar mice …

Some cats are of course pescetarian but we look after them too with salted herrings from our specialist liquorice range, dolphins and sharks from pick n’ mix. Sadly, no ‘thank you for looking after my pescetarian cat’ offerings though.

Our ancient ancestors obviously loved animals too – up to a (very sharp) point – as dinosaurs also feature in chocolate and jelly bean form, as do other reptiles such as chocolate frogs and turtles. We also get the occasional unicorn, but they’ve generally vanished before we get the chance to do a stock take.

Jelly-filled snails occasionally (and always very slowly) crawl under our counter, and jelly or fizzy worms often wriggle their way into paper bags for the little boys and girls of Worcester to enjoy. Oh, and we’re expecting robins to fly in this Christmas.

With Worcester BID ushering in herds of elephants to the city next summer, hopefully sunnier times lie ahead for all of us.

‘Vive les animaux’ as they quite correctly say in France.

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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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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

Christmas messages

Did you miss us?

Pick and Mix by Proxy

Locked down but certainly not locked out

Dreaming of a Bright Christmas

Don't just go to work on an egg, be the egg

Pennies and Pounds

Mysterious People

Sweet on animals

A trip down Petticoat Lane

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