A Sweet Spot

A Sweet Spot

an ode to vintage English Sweets

On chocolate, Roald Dahl, author of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, said 
“In music, the equivalent would be the golden age of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. In painting, it was the equivalent of the Italian Renaissance and the advent of the Impressionism at the end of the 19th Century; in literature, Tolstoy, Balzac and Dickens.” 



I love the way the names
of vintage things sound
in the ear. And in this case,
in the mouth. 
Like the sweets 
made in 1930s England.
Its Golden Confectionary Age.
There was Black Magic.
And Blue Ribands.
Freddos, Rolos,
Aeros and Maltesers.
Licorice Allsorts,
sporting an occasional 
aniseed spog, coconut ring 
or fondant pencil. 
Welcome Refreshers.
The debut on Earth
of chocolate bars 
from Mars.
And a Milky Way.
The Smarties, and Sugar Babies,
Big Hunks and Red Hots.
PayDays, for the deeply
Depressioned.
And Toff-O-Lux
for the swells,
from Mackintosh, 
the Master toffee-
and-caramel Makers
of Yorkshire.
These and other small treats
that gave people 
great pleasure 
in hard times. 
Maybe we take a page 
from their back-in-time book
of daily life, 
and keep calm 
and carry on,
enjoying the sweetness


wherever we find it.

---

Colin Goedecke, Long Beach, New York, April 2025