Egg-cel-lent
 |
| Tasty, but not the eggs I am looking for... |
No, the title isn’t
some kind of lame Mr Burns impression or pun. It wasn’t even
intended to reflect that it’s Easter, or be a nod to Lent. It was prompted by thinking
about some really rather lovely tuck shop sweets that I used to buy
when I was in the Cub Scouts. I know that when you are hovering
around double digits in age, it’s quite easy to be impressed by
anything, even reaching double digits in age. After Cubs, I used to
buy about 20 pence worth of tuck shop bounty. That’s probably
confusing as I’m not sure they sold Bounty, let alone one for that
price. 20 pence used to buy me ten jelly fried eggs, a 5p Highland
Toffee bar, and probably the last 5p went on something frivolous like
fizzy cola bottle jellies. I'll take each in turn, as I did back then
actually:
Jelly fried eggs : I’m
not sure if this is what they were really called. I know we called
them fried eggs, but to someone ignorant of sweet-based lingo, they
might think we had a genuine fried egg placed in our eager palms,
ready to suck at the yoke before someone offered us an ill-timed high
five. These jelly fried eggs were lovely. The whites were soft and
pleasant to chew, the yolks chewier and tasted different enough to
approximate the difference found between real egg yolks and whites. I
miss those jelly fried eggs, because the ones you can by today are
utter trash. They are either so hard that they feel like the thing
the dentist puts in your mouth to take an impression, or they are so
bland that you might as well suck at the breeze as a van drives past,
you’d get more flavour (and probably a lung problem too before
long).
Highland Toffee bar :
For 5p, this was the investment, or long term purchase. This flat bar
that was so very attached to its wrapper, once opened, would last you
the walk home, and then some. It was a sheet of toffee basically,
thin and bendy. Some serious web searching just now (in expression,
if not time spent) didn't really throw up anything that looked like the
bar I used to buy. The ones on the image search either look too long,
too skinny or too new. Or old (just to cover all bases). I must make
the effort to try a new one at some point, although I will brace
myself for the disappointment that I can predict looming over the
horizon.
Finally, we get to the
fizzy cola jellies (or even the non-fizzy ones, depending on what was
left): Modern day equivalents certainly seem acceptable when compared
to the memory of the ones of my youth. Naturally you can get the
really cheap and nasty ones that taste like bleach, or the amazing
ones that actually taste of actual cola. Of course, you also get the
fifty shades of cola in-between. It’s nice that some things don’t
seem to change too much, although tell that to someone who grew up
with cola cubes and I’m sure they’ll chase you on their penny
farthing like the cheeky git you are.
So while you are
scoffing your chocolate and sweets this Easter, pause and wonder what
delights you might never have tried and that are probably now lost to
us, unless someone had the forsight to place some in a time capsule
somewhere. I truly believe that the first time traveller will be
someone tired of their chocolate bars growing smaller and their jelly
sweets tasting like pre-chewed gum. Okay, I don’t truly believe
that, but it made me giggle.
