Sweet Shops

Hello Poetry Lovers

Sweet Shops are all the thing at the moment. Round my way anyway.

A fascinating subject for the nostalgic, they carry such weight. Quite literally, who remembers getting two ounces of sherbet pips? Hands up!

Well, wonderful and clever poet Trisha Broomfield has captured these details and memories succinctly. A terrific piece that will bring back so many memories.

Read on – that’s an order!

Mr Bonnie’s Sweet Shop

It sat squat on the corner of Market Place and Cone Street

on the way to the dentist’s house,

it sold every type of sweet;

Fruit Salads, and Black Jacks, four for a penny!

Sherbet dips or dabs? Jamboree Bags,

rubbery Milk Bottles, Flying Saucers—

melted in your mouth and stuck to the roof of it,

hard boiled squares of Rhubarb and Custard—

cut your tongue and made it bleed,

bubble gum, soft and pink—stopped your words coming out

Gob Stoppers lethally similar to the gum,

garish pink shrimps, who would eat them now?

Chocolate Buttons covered in hundreds and thousands—

not proper chocolate like Cadbury’s

Aniseed Balls and Mint Imperials, choke hazards

wrapped in white, crumpled paper,

Liquorice boot laces and pipes, Jelly Beans and Babies,

white Cigarettes with red tips, we sucked the ends to points

Wagon Wheels, huge, Mars Bars equally huge

and with a reputation, Love Hearts—BE MINE

you could woo whoever you fancied,

they never had BOG OFF written on them.

Trisha Broomfield

Wasn’t that a beautiful piece?! Didn’t Trisha take you personally into that sweet shop?! Lovely words and memories. Thank you so much, Trisha. More please!

Thanks for tuning in, PL’s. We’ll be back with more poetry action real soon…..