by Peter Harris

Created on: August 24, 2010   Last Updated: August 27, 2010

A question of taste

“Sweets” is an ambiguous term and can include a broad range of desserts, favourite chocolates and individual traditional sweets as sold in bulk by those specialist shops that showcase their jars in the windows, drawing in passers-by with an almost hypnotic effect.

Also, one must consider individual choice and this will be different for everyone. For me, choices are based on personal experience – those delicious childhood memories that invoke a sense of mouth-watering delight whenever I think about them.

There are many factors to consider: Sweets that were bought as a treat on the weekend with my hard-earned pocket money; sweets I'd buy craftily from the local shop outside the school gates, often devouring several before first bell; sweets my brother and I used during frequent games of warfare, our plastic soldiers and tanks exploding in the bedroom.

These are only a few examples – like everyone, I will always have my favourites because they remind me of certain times, certain events – carefree, happy times where the summers lasted forever.

My list is different because each choice represents values, life stages, friendships and much more besides – they represent tales that are as individual as the sweets themselves.

Of course, there are other sweets – there always will be – which tease our taste buds from afar, laying almost dormant until they strike at us from the depths of the supermarket shelves, begging us to “try me”.

I like to think that I have a more traditional taste, but even I have succumbed to the odd newbie in the world of sweets. Here is my definitive list (love it or hate it):

10 - Cola cubes. As the name suggests, these are smallish cubes of…well, cola-flavoured sugar-encrusted hard sweets. These are the little devils that caught my attention in the little shop near my school. There was something most gratifying about buying a quarter of cola cubes - guaranteed not to last til lunch. A real dentists nightmare!

9 – Flying saucers. By this, I'm referring to the brightly-coloured spaceship shaped sweets, filled with an intense burst of sharp sherbet. The spaceship simply disintegrates and I'd always pull a face as the tang of the sherbet took effect.

8 – Space dust – This comes in different forms these days, but when I was a kid there was only one original. This stuff was lethal, it felt naughty, almost illegal to buy somehow. My brother

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>