So doing a special birthday cake at the week-end with a spring theme and using some rice paper daisies for decoration, it was obviously important to taste the aforesaid daisies, quality control is paramount!
As the rice paper melted on my tongue I was instantly transported to the little sweet shop that I used to go to when I was at infant and junior school.
The rice paper had evoked the initial salivation and anticipation of sherbet, the memory of the amazing flying saucers that were one of my favourite treats.
The shop was a sweet shop, it sold nothing but sweets, jars of pineapple chunks, cola cubes, aniseed balls, humbugs, fruit salad, black jacks, fireman’s hose, chocolate honeycomb and so much more, a veritable paradise and for me a place to anguish over what to choose!
In the sherbet department not only were there flying saucers and sherbet lemons but dabs, a packet of sherbet with a lolly to lick and dip, the sherbet tubes with a liquorice straw that you bit the end of and then sucked up the white powder (obviously an early precursor for those who now inhale up another white powder through a straw). Then there was the farthing or even a ha’penny worth of sherbet crystals in a white paper bag, orange, lemon or strawberry. There was only two ways of eating it, to tip the bag up and try to gently shake the crystals into your mouth, not always a safe option as you could get too much and choke or miss your mouth and lose some, or to use your finger as a tool, lick it and dip it so the sherbet stuck and then lick it off, by the time the bag was empty it was falling apart and your finger was either bright yellow, orange or pink.
You could of course take the crystal home and put it in a glass and mix with water to make a sherbet drink, but quite frankly even as a small child I thought that was disgusting!!!
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