Spogs and other thingamajigs

Back in August (“A Quarter of Nostalgia“) I wrote about the “bobbly aniseed jelly ones” in Bassetts’ Liquorice Allsorts, when I should have called them by their ‘correct’ name of spogs! How did I come across this? Well, recently on BBC’s “Breakfast” program they interviewed Danny Danzger and Mark McCrun, authors of a new book “The Thingummy” , this book provides the real names of many common ‘thingummies’ complete with history, myth and anecdote behind them. Apart from explaining that Spogs are the blue and pink aniseed sweets out of liquorice allsorts, the book also gives the name for the groove that runs between your nose and your mouth, the stringy bits of a banana, and the name of the white exhaust trail that an aeroplane makes in the sky! The Retro Sweet Hamper web site clearly know their spogs! But if Spogs are the blue and pink aniseed sweets, please tell me what the yellow thingamajigs are in their picture – I have never seen them in the UK – have you!?

A Quarter of Nostalgia…

Some months ago I came across the A quarter of website, they sell sweets that you thought had disappeared; Black Jacks, Refreshers, Sugar Peanuts, Lemon Sherbets and about 700 more! The days of four Black Jacks for a penny are long gone but still a great site if you want a little treat!

I had a hankering for some liquorice and included in my tenners worth some Bassetti, now maybe it was stale, a bad batch or maybe my jaws are getting weak, but I can’t recall ever having liquorice sticks that damned hard before! Anyone else out there tried this stuff?

I gave up on buying Bassetts’ Liquorice Allsorts some time ago when I bought a bag one Christmas from Sainburys, again maybe it was a duff batch but I was extremely dissapointed at the small amount of actual liquorice in the bag, just tons of sugary stuff, very little plain liquorice and little if any of those bobbly aniseed jelly ones!

Have they economised on the ingredients over the years or was I just unlucky? The picture on the American Candy Blog seems to show a far different mix than I had. Do they have different mixes for different countries I wonder?

Love it or hate it

Let’s get this blog rolling…

Something non-political and non-controversial to start with maybe…

A comment on something from Metro would be nice, but it’s Saturday…

Aah, found a copy of Metro I stuffed in my bag on Monday

Here we go…

Something from the Quiz page caught my attention…

Thick and black and savoury,
Eating this takes bravery!
On the tongue its taste is hot,
The jar looks like a cooking pot.

Well apart from the third line I’d say that describes Marmite pretty well! A Marmite lover might be inclined to use hot in place of great, but those that hate it would probably think that salty would be a better description!

But wait.. the Wikipedia entry on Marmite shows that in 2000 the noted lateral thinker Edward de Bono advised the U.K Foreign Office that the Arab-Israeli conflict might be due, in part, to low levels of zinc found in people who eat unleavened bread, a known side-effect of which is aggression. He suggested shipping out jars of Marmite to compensate.

Damn politics gets in everywhere… doh!