The Candy Box

When I was 7 years old, my parents moved us to the small village of Cobham in Kent. They went there to take up the running of a sweet shop called The Candy Box. I have some fairly strong memories of that time and some of them revolve around the sweets that were sold.

My favourite chocolate bar at the time was Country Style, a raisin and biscuit bar from Cadbury which I absolutely loved. When people talk about their favourite childhood chocolate, it’s one that is never mentioned and one that hardly anyone else seems to remember, as it was discontinued before the days when campaigns were launched by fans to keep production going. It was packaged in a pink gingham wrapper and I even loved the look of that.

Nowadays I couldn’t even look at chewing gum, because I can’t stand the texture of it. Actually, I don’t think I ever liked it, but the company that produced one make had the perfect selling point for me, football cards.

This was back in the 1972/73 season which was when I really started to watch and read about the game. My Dad absolutely detested the sport. He found the foul play and the whole atmosphere completely unbearable. I honestly can’t imagine what he would think about today’s game with its cheating and play acting. Actually I can, because I find the players in the male game appalling and only have an interest in Women’s Football because, at the moment, it is a game that is still played in a sporting manner. I really hope that continues even if players like Trinity Rodman want to see more nastiness and cheating. Well, here in the UK we definitely don’t so I hope she stays away from the WSL!

Where was I? Although we only had highlights of 5 or 6 games a weekend, the players became an integral part of my life. I had my favourite players, like Peter Osgood, the striker who played for my favourite team Chelsea, but I was never guided by the team they played for and I grew to like players across the league because of the way they played. When I opened the packet I often just threw the chewing gum away as it was just the cards I was interested in!

In terms of small sweets I liked Flying Saucers, Fruit Salad chews and Rhubarb and Custard sweets. They were all a couple of pence for a quarter pound and when I bought some it was often to share with my best friend at the time, Lucy. She would usually buy some as well so we would have half a pound of sweets to get through between us. It never seemed to take long to eat them all!

There is only one bar that I loved then that is still around and which I still eat. Milky Bar is a white chocolate confectionery which doesn’t really have more than a physical resemblance to chocolate, but it’s the taste of my childhood and will take me right back to those days. I can still see The Candy Box and summer days spent with Lucy. I wonder what happened to her?