When I was a kid during the Sixties there was a shop near my first school in Ashton on Ribble called the Penny Shop.
I've no idea if that was its real name but that's how I remember it.
It was crammed with glass jars of sweets stacked in lines on shelves. There was a big massive till on the counter too. For the life of me I can't visualise the shop owner at all. That memory has dissolved like kali in the rain.
What I do recall is asking for a penny mix!
A penny mix was a loose paper bag into which went various sweets and toffees you chose from the jars. My favourites were:
- Fruit Salad in their orangy red wrappers
- Black Jacks in their black and grey wrappers
- Coward and Bowser toffee chews, which I think were in a green and white wrapper with a thistle on?
- White Chocolate Mice
- Sweet Bananas
- Chocolate Caramel Sticks
- Anglo Bubbly
- Spanish
- Liquorice wheels
- Liquorice Pipes
I'm sure there were more but that's a few bags' full there! Whether each full bag was a penny or each individual sweet escapes me but by gum they were damn fine at the end of the school day!
Did you have penny mixes readers?
Woodsy, do you remember the miniscule decimal 1/2p piece we used to have?
ReplyDeleteWell one of those could get you two fruit salads (or two blackjacks) at the local Martin's in the early seventies...
Yep, I do Steve! They were tiny! and light! Now two Fruit Salads, that was value for money! Don't recall Martin's though.
DeleteOh dear, I think in my day it was 4 fruit salads for an old penny...
ReplyDeleteI loved those old pennies Andy. Big, polished and great to hold! Niw Farthings I don't recall handling!
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