Sweet on animals

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