The Garden Fence - help and support in tough times

Bathory

I didn't get easter eggs as a youngster. Mum would always buy them the next day when the local shop smashed them up and sold them off in paper bags for pennies.

There's an olde worlde sweet shop close to where we live. OH came back with sarsaparilla drops and coltsfoot rock, both of which I'd never heard of. Loved the sarsaparilla drops but the rock was a bit of an acquired taste!

[Deleted User]

My favourite sweets are Sherbet Lemons or Everton mints.When I was a lot younger (and thinner ) it was Palm toffee bars and I loved the banana split ones, or Olde English spangles Evrything was rationed when I was small and you could usually buy 2ozs of sweets if you were lucky enough to have the coupons and the cash (often not at the same time ) I can remember when you could buy a 1d bar of Cadbury's chocolate from a machine on the railway station I thought it was brilliant.My Mum would buy the Caley five boys chocolate which had all different flavour chocolates in one bar.She also liked parma violets for some reason and I hated them as they smelt odd to me.
Loved toffees though "Sharps the word for toffees"

there was also a honeycombe bar covered in chocolate that was rather yummy,Not crunchie, it was in a paper wrapping I think it was made by Hussicks, no wonder lots of my generation had fillings.When rationing ended everyone went mad for sweeties
There is a sweet shop in Rochester High street about 6 miles away from me that sells all sorts of old fashioned sweets,but not at an old fashioned price unfortunately

Brambleberry

Popping in to admire the fence!

All the sweetie talk has got me remembering caramac bars from the local pool vending machine after swimming lessons on a Saturday morning, can't eat them now without a distant memory of chlorine!
I was nine before I could get to a sweet shop unsupervised on my walk to school (we lived in the middle of nowhere) but I used to save my pennies for a 10p packet of rubble gum (what was I thinking?) or a wham bar. If I managed a whole 20p then it was a gold bullion bar of toffee poured in a little foil tray.
As for the Easter eggs, for years our family coffee mug cupboard was filled with the mugs that came with the eggs, but the smarties mugs were the nicest - I do miss those ones!

nursemaggie

I went right off sherbert lemons the day sweets came off ration. My friend and I were slow to learn to ride our bikes. I used to scream every time dad let go. I think Anne did to. Anyway the week before sweets came off ration our dad said we could have a shilling each if we learned to ride our bikes.

Well it was a school holiday so we practiced all week and on Friday night when our dads got paid we got our shillings. On Saturday morning we bought half a pound of sherbert lemons between us. We had never had more than a penny worth. I have never been able to eat them since.

It certainly did the trick though I have biked thousands of miles in my life until I found the traffic too much. Had to get on the pavement a bit too quick far too often for my liking. Decided I would live longer if I gave it up.

I still love jelly babies and American Hard Gums.

Mar at 33 calories that egg must have been a sparrow's. 70 calories is one medium egg. leave the butter out if you want to save calories.

kezlou

Oo new thread, any room for another midget? 5" 2. More commonly known as hobbit or mammy midget.


Took a few days off from the web in general. Instead been having family time and tormrnting my giant of a child he's almost 6" and his lil bro.

Sweeties hmmm wethors original and !clairs love them

S_Wales_Saver

Caramac yuk. Always hated that. And liquorice allsorts are the work of the devil. I CANNOT eat just one.

But does anyone else remember Radience Devon Dainties? Creamy toffee wrapped in gold and red foil wrappers. They were the nicest toffees ever. Haven't seen them for decades

Floss

Lindt still sell boxes of gold chicks & bunnies at Easter in Mr T.

My favourites were Olde English Spangles, Opal Mints, chewy sweet cigarettes and the original Milky Way before they messed ("improved" my ar5e!) with it!

Sunny but breezy & chilly in that famous North-west seaside town, trippers were buying hats & gloves in Primarni!

Really need to get my seeds sown today but need to put the chitting spuds somewhere else as they are currently resting on my propagator base.

By the way, can we have the fence rubbed down so no splinters from resting on it?!

Jazee

Morning fencers. For those in the garden today, don't forget to rub down splinters and nail back panels becoming loose from fatties like me leaning on them.

I got up early today but did lie in bed while the sun came up and listened to the birdsong.

Ooh sweets - now I'm not a great fan of chocolate (gives me a headache so not worth it) but I love soft sweet cigarettes or candy sticks as they're now called, wine gums and vanilla fudge - has to be the old fashioned crumbly type.

Its no wonder I have a message on the answerphone from the dentist.

Gym, dog walking, some housework and gardening planned here today.

Have a great day everyone.

GreyQueen

Morning, fellow fencers.

I am hicking about today as went a little bit mad on my allotment for 3 hours yesterday swinging the old mattock about and forking the resultant clods. The Path of Least Resistance is now history and the south flank of the Alpine Carrot Bed has been busted up.

When I took on my allotment in early March 2008 (a truly vile month weather-wise and health-wise) it had been derelict for many years. And badly-cultivated for many more that. The grass was as high as an elephant's eye and the only way to walk up the allotment, due to slovenly gardening causing an embankment up one side, was The Path of Least Resistance, a rambling uneven track several meters in from the edge.

It was the spring of 2009 before I got to clear the embankment. It was a strip 33 m x 3 m and I chiselled it clear of grass tussocks, excavated unbelievable amounts of carp, and then grew two parallel rows of spuds on it. Most people haven't seen spuds grown like that, it was quite a talking point. When the spuds were up, and the crops parallel to the spuds cleared, I dragged several tonnes of soil sideways, flattening the site and eliminating that part of the Path.

There were two humourous exceptions to this levelling. One was an 8ft long berm, rather like a grave, which was beside a strawberry bed and couldn't be moved until the strawberry bed was moved. I grew courgettes on it and, when questioned, told passers-by it was where I'd buried a neighbour who'd annoyed me.:rotfl:

The other exception was The Rough, a patch at the top of the allotment. The spud bed had been dragged sideways into a berm which couldn't travel any further sideways as it needed to go onto an uncleared area aka The Rough, a patch of untrammelled wilderness. I got the area in good order in autumn-winter 2013-14 then ran out of time and planted spuds on it. I have made it my winter-work for 2014-15 to get rid of the Alpine Carrot Bed (my dad named it, I did grow carrots on it one year)

Once the spuds were done, I made it my business to chisel away at the Path of Least Resistance, and finished it yesterday. Depending on how the clods I busted have dried out, and how far I get today before getting knackered, I may have the old landscaping rake out and start moving the carrot bed sideways to flatten it into the spud-patch-as-was.

All of this is a long (sorry) and involved way of explaining why I am feeling a very real sense of progress and satisfaction. It isn't easy doing manual labour when you have ME, you have to pace yourself, but amazing things can be done by the utterly bl00dy-minded.

The sun is shining from a flawless blue sky for the second day on the trot, it's warm enough to work outside in shirtsleeves, and I am revving myself up with several pints of tea to get back out there and show it cold steel.

Jazee

Just WOW GreyQueen. I only have a small veg patch being introduced this year and I'm finding that hard work to dig over. Will stick to raised beds and pots me thinks.

Gym done, just 40 minutes, having a cuppa now.