Memories - early or general

I loved Jubblys (don’t know how to spell it), cut off the corner and spend ages sucking it.

It was just free milk by my day, which strangely seemed to taste better when it had sat in the sun for a few hours.

My mum used sterilised milk for everything and I found it horrible to try and drink. Used to look forward to going to school for a nice bottle of pasteurised.

Hi Anne, did you ever buy one that wasn't frozen ? No, me neither!!!!

No, Mick. Would always be out of a shop freezer. It would have been a real treat then. I would have been six before rationing came off sweets and even then I don’t think there was much variety in sweets and chocolate. Seem to just remember thin bars of Cadbury’s chocolate with faces on. An ice cream would have been a block between two wafers (lick round the edge till the waver went soggy). I am making myself feel hungry!

Anne, I think perhaps the chocolate bar wrapper with the faces might have been 5 boys by Nestle.

I am with you there Anne, Wall's ice cream or Dairy Maid. Mum had to cut the block for the wafers and a roll also for the cornets. Not the same tastes as today. I think we appreciated it more then. A stick of liquorice wood would keep me happy for a while.

Going back to the late 50's, we lived on Charter Avenue (by the island) in Canley and were about 300 to 400 yards away from Charter shops. Granny Strong came to live with us for a while (must have been dad’s turn, as she was passed around the family) as we had plenty of room. One of her favorite treats was "butter mints" and I was regularly shipped off to the shops for a quarter. It did not take many trips before I discovered how nice these were and I could easily scoff 2 or 3 on the way home. What I didn't know was that granny knew how many sweets were in a quarter and I was soon found out!

Walrus, thank you, that must have been what they were. I Googled them and found a picture. I used to be sent up to Wyley Road paper shop to get dad’s Condor (no age restrictions then), sometimes he would let me spend the change and I would buy one of them. The sweets I remember when I was at Radford School were from the sweet shop on the corner of Fynford Road. A bag of callie that you stuck your finger in and it turned your finger red, and watches made of sweets on elastic that you could hide under your cardie and eat in class. No wonder I have always been a bit chubby!

My dad called these 'sliders' and I wasn't fond. Partly because the wafers were like sweet cardboard and partly because I couldn't eat them fast enough and ended up wearing the ice cream.

Yesterday bought what is called a "Grout Reviver" (will not be buying another) and it bought back the memory of that white stuff we used to brighten our school pumps with.

That's going back a while, Mick - pumps. I walk my pooch in a pair of 'sneakers' (me, not the dog!!!!)

True story. The only holidays we could afford when I was young was to visit my grannie (dad’s mother) in Nottingham, for a couple of weeks each year. At the end of the holiday, a crowd of my cousins used to come down to the bus station to see us off. Invariably, one of my cousins came back home with us for a holiday. As all my cousins came to see us leave for home at the end of our stay, one of them would hop on the bus. My parents knew that this would happen every year. I think it was mum and dad’s way of letting at least one cousin have a holiday as that side of the family was even more poverty stricken than we were. On this particular departure, Lesley decided it was her turn to come with us. She was the same age as me, about 9 or 10, and streetwise, whereas I was completely naive. She'd stayed with us before so she knew the area where we lived. She was basically a con artist at 10 years old - no kidding. On the first day of her stay, she conned my dad out of tuppence, a penny each, so we could go to the cafe at the bottom of the street to buy a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum, There was a machine which accepted 1d, fixed to the outside wall of the cafe. You had to turn a knob to get the packet delivered. Lesley wanted me to go first, so I put my coin into the slot, turned the knob and was rewarded with one packet of gum. Lesley could hardly contain her mirth as she inserted her penny, turned the knob and was duly rewarded with two packets of gum!!! Unbeknown to me, on the knob, an arrow was engraved and every time the arrow pointed forward, two packets of gum were delivered. I didn't know that but obviously my dear cousin did, but never told me. I was not very happy about being conned, especially by my cousin and even worse being conned by a girl. When we had both grown up, Lesley spent most of her adult life in prison - yes, that's correct… for embezzlement. In later life, Lesley went on to commit some far more serious crimes.