Writing from our own experience is very often a good way to start, and the mixed pleasures of sweets at Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night are a rich vein to tap.
Start with words. List all the names of sweets that you can think of. Refreshers, jelly snakes, Dime bars, gobstoppers…
Read round. One word from each person in turn. Keep going until everyone is out of words. Encourage repetitions. Advise people not to worry if someone has already said something they have on their list, after all, surely you can never have too many sherbet lemons!
Spend a bit of time sharing thoughts and memories about sweets. Remember, perhaps, Roald Dahl’s description of the sweetshop in Boy. Or here is Nigel Slater on ‘The Ritual of the KitKat’. Read the instructions –there is bound to be controversy. And he doesn’t even start on the whole business of eating –nibble the chocolate or bite straight in?
The lost ritual of KitKat-eating: the indescribably enjoyable art tat used to be involved in eating a bar if KitKat before some unimaginative clot decided to repackage it.
Slide the bar from its open-sided wrapper without tearing the wrapper. Do not puncture he gossamer-thin foil. Gently rub your finger over each finger of chocolate to reveal the word ‘KitKat’. Slide your thumbnail down the first of the valleys in between the chocolate fingers, this tearing the foil. (It is important to tear the foil in a straight line, and to keep the edges of the tear as smooth as possible.) Eat, finger by finger, breaking off a new one as you go, rather than all at once.
It must be said that there were some who liked to unwrap their KitKat without cutting the foil Those who did, inevitably also smoothed the foil out afterwards, so that it was completely flat and smooth. They then rolled it up into a tiny ball. Because of its inherent thinness, KitKat foil made a smaller ball than any other chocolate bar.
From Eating for England The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table. Nigel Slater.
Launch into a longer piece of writing. The prompt, really, is the list of sweets and the talk surrounding them. It is a memory of sweets, the buying and the eating of them, the feel and look of them. Whatever comes to you.
Enjoy the stories and memories. More will arise as you read and listen.
