I walk the old route across the city. Mapped in my head. New flats fill the wasteland where the towerblocks once stood. New shops, old shops. I push open the door to Ianeeta’s the sweetie shop in the hilltoon and smile as my english voice struggles with asking for a quarter of soor plooms again. I stuff the twist of a paper bag into my brown corduroy coat. Past the engravers shop where Jimi Hendrix lies next to a sign for a petrol pump now. At the school a wee boy walks home with his mum. She says….’just don’t react, thats what he wants.’ ‘But he says bad things to me.’ ‘What does he say ?’ ‘He says I’m a little loser’. ‘ Well you must tell your teacher. And I’ll be having words with his mum. Anyway tell me something nice that happened today.’ She sighs, opens the gate and they go inside.’ The sun peeks out fleetingly. The lollipop man tells me he enjoys his job, says it keeps him out of the pub, out from under her feet. These streets bring back memories of my year at art school, of making and writing and walking my way into this city. I feel for a sweetie in my pocket. I prise one away, sticky and radioactive green, pop it in my mouth and walk to the end of the line.
dominique cameron 
On form as ever Dominique with your unique sweetness in life’s observations – soor plooms – well I recently scoured the internet of all the things in modern lifestyle to hunt for favourite sweets from my past that are really hard to buy locally – and amassed a small fortune in long lost favourites pocket 18 tins of Wintergreen, Ginger and Cinnamon Pastilles the latter being like miniature oddfellows from the Netherlands and made for the American market, and American Cracker Jack’s that now in bags instead of the traditional boxes and the gifts inside no longer contain lucky charms and rings but new silly new apps for tablets and phones how fifty years have turned – and lastly my favourite teeth crunching Liquorice Torpedoes which are like sweet gold nuggets of delight to buy – so I ordered a kilo size bag and it lasted a mere three weeks – they say the child never parts from the adult well there is certainly a lot of truth in that and just thinking of those torpedoes will have me sending away for another kilo bag again – yum 😋
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Ha, I know for me as a child it was sherbet fountains, milky bars and spangles 🙂
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Sweet Heaven – I even remember when one Mars Bar could be cut in half as they were much much larger and tasted unique in the 1970’s with wrapping you unwrapped – you could have one half one day and savor the other half for the following day and just like Kendals Mint Cake the old Mars Bars were very popular with hikers ☺️ now if I had a Time Machine what a braw journey I would make and talk about spangles oh fizzy cola flavour and square polo mints ?
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Brilliant
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Thank you 🙂
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