Many, many years ago, before email and mobile phones and reality tv, two little girls lived in a small town in South West England. Every Saturday the older of the sisters would get a shiny big 10 pence piece - pocket money. Being a generally super kind of big sister, she would allocate one penny of this to the younger child. Both would walk up the road and over the bridge and across the crossing, and enter the kingdom of the little shop on the corner, where big sister and littler sister deliberated over which of the myriad of sugary delights to drop into the old Vitalite tub and purchase with the treasured pocket money. Aniseed balls or white mice or sherbet spaceships for me and my one penny probably. Maybe a blackjack or fruit salad, a cola bottle...
Predictably, the splendour and allure of pick'n'mix sweets has rather faded 20-odd years on. However, when I popped into Heals on Tottenham Court Road recently, that wide-eyed kind of wonder and greed flooded back as I found an impossibly cute miniature bakery shop where there used to be a flower stall.
Before I'd even got to inspecting the edible wares, I'm a sucker for that old-style type font they use. Cute! - especially with the soft lights and tiled walls and minty hand-written labels. As for the food... it had rows of pretty multi-coloured fairy cakes with far too much swirly icing and liberal scatters of sprinkles; it had hand-thrown pork pies and big, luscious looking slices of quiche; it had fruit tarts and hugely decadent looking frou frou cakes; it had hot pies and cold sandwiches; it had jams and stylish boxes of various teas; it had plates and plates of sweet-smelling biscuits and muffins and cakes...
I wasn't really hungry and I didn't really need a cake but as with those Saturday mornings at the sweet selection, the fun was all in the oohing and aahing and ummming about what to pick over everything else.
I picked a banana muffin. It was good. Not super, but pretty damn good. And now I'm just enjoying thinking what I'm going to spend my pocket money on next time I go in...
1 comment:
Aieee, I went to Heal's on Sunday and saw this too and was soooo excited, isn't it just the best little shop. Mmmmm, unfortunately John wouldn't let me try anything :( But maybe we can have a big and little sister saucepan outing one day?
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