Inspired by Gail Aldwin’s ‘Socks’, I have been investigating local sweet shops. If you are confused, then read the flash fiction and let Gail tempt you. It is my sweet joy to present Gail’s foodie flash fiction.
Socks by Gail Aldwin
The paper bag is damp in my hand and I peek inside – most of the sherbet pips are stuck together like frogs’ spawn. I pull free a chunk and it fizzes on my tongue. Angela’s got rhubarb and custard, she counts the sweets, putting them in a line along her thigh.
‘That’s not fair.’ She talks with a sweet tucked inside her cheek, making her look like a gerbil. ‘Last time I bought two ounces, I got eight sweets, but I’ve only got six this time.’
‘Don’t forget the one in your mouth,’ I say.
‘Oh yes.’ She nods and returns the sweets to the bag, inspecting the yellow and red sides. ‘This one’s chipped. D’you want it?’
‘Let’s swap.’ I take the sweet from her and spill some loose pips into her palm.
‘Is that all I get?’ She downs the scattering in one go.
I’ve been walking home with Angela for a whole week now. She’s nice – she’s the friendliest person in my new school. She lives round the corner from me and she says I can call for her in the mornings, if I like. I wish I could sit next to her, but I’m stuck with Brian Redding. He takes more than his fair share of the desk and he rubs his leg against mine when he gets up from the chair.
‘Let’s have a look in the stream.’ Angela picks up her satchel and leads the way. I don’t have a bag so it’s easy for me to scramble over the rocks, but she has to make a path over the dried mud. Once we’re by the water, she dares me to walk under the bridge. I look at the sloping sides and water laps right up to the edge.
‘I can’t. I can’t get my sandals wet.’
‘You won’t get wet. There’s enough of a ledge to walk on.’ Angela points. ‘I’ve done it loads of times.’
‘You go first then.’
Angela clutches her satchel and takes side-by-side steps, her back against the concrete wall. I watch her until she beckons. I’m only a couple of paces in when there’s a splash. She’s dropped her satchel and it’s floating down the stream.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Get it, of course.’ She steps into the ankle deep water, then trots along, chasing the bag. When she catches it, she swings the satchel onto the ground, splattering droplets into the air like a fountain. I find her sitting on the bank, her legs are soaked and she’s using a leaf to dry her satchel.
‘Aren’t you going to check inside?’
Angela undoes the buckles and finds her pencil-case, the new felt-pens are leaking. She takes off her socks and wrings them, then wiping her pens, she turns them into a tie-dye of colours.
‘Won’t your mum mind about your socks?’
‘I don’t think so,’ says Angela. ‘Not if I tell her Brian Redding pushed me into the stream.’
Jessie: What inspired this piece?
Gail: My family moved to Dorset from south London when my son was ten years old. This move had many advantages including extending the childhood experiences for Jonny. While his friends in the city thought a good day out involved visiting a theme park, my son was riding down the river on an airbed. Jonny’s adventures triggered memories from my own childhood involving outings to the brook.
Back in the day when sweets were sold from jars and measured in ounces, I regularly bought a bag full to eat by myself or share with friends. None of my childhood memories are complete without the tang of sherbet on my tongue.
Jessie: Please tell me a little about flash fiction form.
Gail: I chose to write Socks as flash fiction due to the concise nature of the form. For flash fiction to be effective, it must contains all the elements of a longer piece such as plot, narrative, characters, conflict, and resolution but these parts are distilled into a story that leaves the reader free to fill in the gaps. I hope I have achieved this in Socks. (Socks was first published by FlashFloodJournal)
Jessie: The sweetshop in your extract resonates with me. Do you still enjoy sweet treats from your childhood?
Gail: Hedgehog! I mean the ice cream not the cute creature. A Hedgehog is a Cornish ice cream coated in clotted cream then rolled in toasted hazelnuts. It is essential eating when visiting Chapel Porth, St Agnes, in Cornwall and brings back such memories.
Jessie: What is your latest novel about?
Gail: Paisley Shirt is fascinating collection of twenty-seven stories that reveal the extraordinary nature of people and places. Through a variety of characters and voices, these stories lay bare the human experience and what it is like to live in our world.
Jessie: What did the reviewers say?
Gail: I have had some lovely reviews.
A collection of great depth and variety, packed with emotional integrity. Gail Aldwin’s flash fictions are sensitive, surprising, unnerving, tender and crucial. Maria Donovan, author of Pumping Up Napoleon and The Chicken Soup Murder
In these arresting and sometimes disturbing short fictions, Gail Aldwin reveals hidden moments between husband and wife, lovers, mothers and sons and those on the edge of society. Relationships are fractured or violent, tender or tragic. Often set in city suburbs in different countries around the world, the vividly written pieces in this collection cover a breadth of life and linger long after reading. Jude Higgins, author of The Chemist’s House
Gail Aldwin is a prize-winning writer of short fiction and poetry. As Chair of the Dorset Writers’ Network, Gail works with the steering group to support writers by connecting creative communities. She is a visiting tutor at Arts University Bournemouth and author of Paisley Shirt a collection of flash fiction. This collection of flash fiction has been nominated for the Saboteur Awards.
I hope you will look up Gail’s collection of flash fiction. Has her featured flash fiction tempted you to buy some sweets? As a child, I used to love buying two ounces of sweets and still can’t walk past a sweet shop.
What are your favourite childhood sweets?
You can contact Gail at:
Twitter: @gailaldwin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gailaldwinwriter/
Blog: The Writer is a Lonely Hunter
Please see all my extracts and excerpts at Book Extracts and my website and blog at JessieCahalin.com.
nice observation of those strange creatures, children.
Such memories! Do you remember Osmond’s sweet shop on South Street in Dorchester? I’ve written a memoir about those days called A Sweet Life. And I’m with you, I prefer plain chocolate, milk chocolate just doesn’t taste the same as it used to.
It is amazing how sweet shops evoke such vivid memories. Sadly, I am not familiar with Dorchester. I think milk chocolate has changed since they moved the factories.
Good post and story! I remember riding my bicycle (my pretend horse) with my pals to a candy/sundry store a mile from My Home. I was about 10 and we were on a quest for something very special. A pack of …Beatles cards. For 5 or 10 cents, I could buy a foil pack with 4 cards and a stick of bubblegum. After buying our packs, we would ride back to my front porch and open our packs! Yay- a Paul McCartney card!
Jena, this is great! Thanks for sharing your memories and giving us a peek into your childhood. Thank goodness you got the Paul McCartney card and not the other kind of ‘beetle’.
Oh, yes, lots of memories of visits to the sweet shop with my sister on a Saturday. Each of us had a shilling (5p) to spend and it took us hours to choose our sweets. I loved pineapple chunksand the chocolate buttons covered in hundreds and thousands. There’s a sweet shop near me which has all those childhood sweets in jars – I have to look the other way when I pass it! 🙂
I had forgotten about pineapple chunks – I loved those. Nowadays, I prefer to eat the fruit. However, I am still partial to the chocolate drops and they still sell them in the market, back in Leeds.
I used to love these alphabet sweets and coconut mushrooms. I miss the 10p mixes you used to be able to buy from the local shop which has long since closed. We used to regularly visit markets/bootsales and I remember buying my favourite sweets from the sweet van. I don’t really eat much sweets these days, more of a chocolate lover.
The sweets evoke so many memories for me too. I am nostalgic for the time when the only choice I had to make was which sweets I wanted. Nowadays, I also prefer chocolate: the dark chocolate I hated as a child. I don’t think milk chocolate tastes the same.
They do change the recipes. I get nostalgic all the time
I didn’t like chocolate as a child – much preferred boiled sweets. I’m surprised my teeth survived all the crunching. Did the sweet van play a musical tune like ice-cream vans?
Haha no it wasn’t that type on van. Umm like the vans that open up they sell meat and stuff from.
We used to have a cake van-no music-that used to come around I miss that. ☺