Sweet memories

I was in the relatively unfamiliar streets around Glasgow Tron today, looking for a camera case - I got one, after being surprised at the lack of such things in my more accustomed retail haunts - when I caught sight of this real, old-fashioned sweetie shop. Two windows, one on either side of the door, each stuffed with big jars of the kind of sweets I thought gone for good.

If you look carefully at this window you can see Floral Gums, Cherry Lips, Tea Cakes, Lucky Tatties, Liquorice sticks and puff candy in unwrapped chunks in the jar. I chose this window because of the first two - when I was in Primary School we'd buy these absurdly scented little gums in sticky paper bags and hide them in our blazer pockets, so that we could fish them out one at a time and consume them undetected - they were, after all, tiny enough to swallow to avoid being caught. But when not in class, I'd often stuff about then of them at once into my mouth for the sheer reckless sticky bulk of them, the overpowering sweetness, and sook at the mass thus created until it disappeared.

The other window was less wonderfully populated, although I did see big jars of Soor Plooms and Cinnamon Balls ...