Have you ever been gob smacked
By a gob stopper?
Wondrous layers of colour
In one spherical blob of confectionery

Into a sticky mouth two grubby fingers go
To check the tongue has done its job
Since last I looked inside my gob
Has it changed shade?
For a penny I paid
Is it now yellow, or purple or jade?

Alas it's become a tiny white blob
Of spherical nothingness
Within my gob
Fit only to follow
My boiled egg breakfast
Down the hollow.

Aniseed balls
Little lumps of terracotta
The ultimate example of sweet tooth rotter
But how you sent the senses reeling
The taste buds thought you most appealing

Bubble gum with waxed paper bound
- half a dozen in the mouth
And you'd hear no sound
Just constant chewing
Which made the jaws ache
With oral creas-ed-ness
And caused the head to quake

How big a bubble could you make?
How many breaths now would it take
Before it splat right in your face
Making it feel it was in a brace
Or that you'd washed your face in glue
And fingers too
Were hard to part
Peeling gum off the cheeks was quite an art

Those were the days of the old corner shop
Four or five we'd pass
On the mile long hop
To school
For the bus ride we were given a penny
But for that, the choice of sweets was many
So we'd watch the double deck bus go past
Preferring to make the gob stopper last

Open the shop door
And the little bell rings times
Pre-vinyl sheeting and carpet on the floor times
Iron shod clogs sounding on the old flagged floor times

Tins of biscuits with hinged glass lid
A few of these and a lot of those
For less than half a quid
Pre-decimal currency times too

Ho hum, ho hum
The 'olden' days were such good fun

12/28/2001

Posted on 12/28/2001
Copyright © 2024 Anne Howe