Posh Chocolates!

Getting older is quite strange. Things you thought were fantastic when you were young start to lose their appeal. There are lots of things that when I was young I would relish, but now I seem to have either have lost the taste for them, or just got bored with them.

Excluding fashion, with which I had a brief flirtation in 1973, not really a vintage year for clothing, I have pretty much liked the same things for years. Don't get me wrong, I like to be adventurous in life, and trying new things is always quite exciting and fun (some things more so than others). Really, though, the things you were introduced to as a child tend to stay with you for life, like a sort of snuggle blanket. But one thing that I have realised this week came as shock to me: I DON'T LIKE CHOCOLATE! I know that this statement will have made lots of you out there gasp with disbelief, but there, I've said it now! What is worse is that I used to love the stuff, and I must have eaten tons of it over the years. Now, I just find it too sweet for my palate. Is this because chocolate is now made with extra sugar, or is it just my taste buds that have become over-sensitive?

When I was younger, you could buy things called penny mixes. These were sweets that cost a  penny. Or fruit salads (neither a fruit nor a salad) or black jacks, which I remember as having a distinctly racist picture on the front. These sweets were four for a penny. I'm a northern working-class lad, so these were our staple sugar rush when I was a kid. But every Sunday, my father would take us all to church and buy us all chocolate on the way home. He would place the assorted bars of loveliness on the mantlepiece, which would start a feeding frenzy among his sugar-starved children, me being the second oldest, the biggest and the most vicious of his offspring, which meant that I would usually get what I believed to be the finest chocolate bar.

I suppose it depends whereabouts in the world you were brought up as to what kind of chocolate you like and remember. Here in Britain we had, and still have, Mars Bars (definitely from Earth though) and Bounty bars, which were always my first choice. We had Marathon bars, which have strangely been renamed as 'Snickers'. We had Topics, another of my favourites, and Picnic bars, which I'm not sure are still in production. Then we had things such as Aztec bars which are no longer made, and Double Deckers - don't know if you can still buy them? But the worst thing you could end up with on a Sunday night, as you settled down to watch Hawaii Five-O, was Turkish Delight, which was neither Turkish, nor a delight. If Dad had gone to a late mass and I had been out playing, I knew when I got back home that I would have missed the chocolate scramble. All that would be left alone, like a leper in a swimming pool, would be the Turkish Delight! I don't know why people like this confectionery, While on holiday in Turkey, everyone said that I must try the Delight there, as it was so different, so I did, and it wasn't! This stuff makes my teeth itch: in fact my teeth are itching while I write this. Having said all this, I always ate it, otherwise it would be another week before I would have chocolate again.

But when I was a kid, there were also posh chocolates. These came in a box, and guilty-looking fathers bought them for angry-looking mothers, who then usually gave them to the kids to eat with a look of, 'it will take more than a lousy box of chocolates before you get into my bed again!' thrown towards the wayward father. But for me the poshest chocolates were called Quality Street, the ones in the purple wrappers were so nice that they have caused vendettas between my siblings and I which are still unresolved! People disagree with me about Quality Street being posh chocolates, then they cite Ferrero Rocher as the poshest of chocolates. Wrong! They are just pretentious wannabes! Quality Street gave you a choice of caramel, truffle, chocolate, orange fondue, a white fondue which I'm not sure what it was supposed to taste of, strawberry, fudge, and the list goes on. My aunt would buy a box of these chocolates for our family each Christmas. We would open the box and gaze in wonder at the multicoloured wrappers. It was like 'Treasure Island', only this chest contained edible jewels.

If you are from Britain and you are reading this you will instantly know what I mean when I say 'the purple ones'. If you are not from Britain, you may not understand this. Firstly, if you like chocolates and have never had a purple Quality Street, then a holiday in Britain is well worth the money just to sample one. This tiny little mouthful of happiness is a hazel nut covered with smooth runny caramel and covered with chocolate. These are always the first to go in every household across Britain.In our house, if you weren't there for the opening of the box ceremony it was tough - you would be left with the green triangle thing when you got home. The children in our house were more Piranha than child and could strip a box of chocolates of its contents in seconds!

I always thought that when I grew up my cupboards would be stocked with chocolates, but I have just lost the taste for the stuff. I have a full tin of Quality Street sitting in my man-drawer right now as I type. I bought it so Harleigh could have one as an illicit treat from time to time, but her chocolate of choice is Kinder Eggs (smart kid: two treats in one). So the chocolates lie there like a Tory manifesto, something no one wants!

Maybe posh chocolates have had their day?