The Village Sweet Shop

Do you remember your village sweet shop?

We had several, one on Water Lane and two on Chapel Hill. All on the way to school. The one on Water Lane was a general grocer's and you could buy things by measure, which would then be put into a brown bag, or a blue one depending what it was. Sugar usually went into a blue bag. There were lots of wooden drawers with wooden skoops. One could buy a measure of tea. Cheese sat on a marble and was cut with a wire, and wrapped in greaseproof paper. How many times did I skip down to that store, to buy a quarter of tea or some sugar. The one at the bottom of Chapel Hill was Miss Daisy's. Miss Daisy was a very old lady and the shop was very old and very dark, and I always had misgivings about going in there, I don't know why. If any of the shops was truly a Dickensian sweet shop that one was. With the bow fronted window, sitting in a row of timber framed shops. All the sweets were in jars lined up in the window. She would twist a paper into a cone and you would choose, oh! the choices. One would hum! and ha! but still come back to your favourite.

The other shop we called Mumford's, which was the family name and I was in the same class as one of the children. This was much more up to date, but still a family store. Here I would buy four chews for a penny and always had three-pence to spend. This store was almost opposite to the gate and pathway that let up to our school, through pines and cedars.

Yes I did have a happy childhood.