Many of us have Christmas traditions. Most are fairly common ones like leaving out a carrot and some booze for the nocturnal white-bearded visitor although mine are somewhat more esoteric like driving 50 miles on Christmas morning trying to find a shop because some dickbrain bought the kids something electrical and forgot the batteries and you just know that 50 miles is nothing compared to whingeing kids for the rest of the day. Naturally though, as times change, a lot of traditions die out due to changes of circumstance like, for example, retirement means I can no longer participate in the great tradition of embarrassing myself totally at the office Christmas party.
I was pretty good at that one and always knew I had reached the alcoholic point of no return when, every year without fail, I would tuck some mistletoe into my belt and wander round asking who would like to kiss me under the mistletoe? It did sort of work once although I had no recollection of the event: all I found was a load of lipstick on my trouser front the next morning. Oh, the hours I spent subsequently, gazing at the female staff and trying to work out who wore a similar shade!
As I say, traditions come and go but one will never change and I wonder just how this might resonate with any of my adoring readers? It concerns a sweet (or for those who cannot speak English, candy) assortment which goes under the name of Quality Street. These are they: a veritable cornucopeia of rainbow-wrapped sweets ranging from caramel to toffee to coconut, predominantly enrobed in chocolate
When I was young and indeed, even when I was an adult on fairly low wage with a wife, cat, children and a large piece of mistletoe to support, a tin of these at Christmas was considered a luxury. One could purchase smaller boxes but they tended to be used throughout the year as gifts for ageing relatives and schoolteachers. The tin was the Holy Grail and one of the first things one put on the Christmas list. One purchased it and, after you had peeled away the sticky tape sealing the lid, inhaled the aroma of chocolate and dwelt on the delightful prospect of all that calorific gratification, this was where the tradition kicked in .............. they had to be sorted out!!! It's not an OCD thing, it just has to be done. The contents lovingly and carefully separated with the growing piles of noisette paté, toffee penny, caramel swirl etc forming a psychedelic pattern on the table. Naturally, when one had finished separating them, you had to count how many you had of each and this is where the first disappointment set in.
Over the years, I must have sorted a good few tins of QS and, without fail, the varieties that always come out top of the quantity table are the creams. I HATE BLOODY CREAMS! I detest, abhor and loathe strawberry creams. I cannot abide orange creams. They are the arsehole of the chocolate world yet, every year, they are there in an abundance to boggle the imagination. Even worse, with one notable exception (who is mad as a box of frogs anyway *waves at Kitty*) nobody else I have ever known likes them either. We all lust for the crunch of a hazelnut, or the pleasure of getting bits of toffee out of your teeth for hours but do we see those glorious purple wrappers proliferate? Do we fu ......... dge. Nestlé, the manufacturers even do giant versions of the most popular ones which are sold individually although strangely enough, not one of those larger offerings includes a cream. Hmmmm.
Now I think about it, the only cream of which I vaguely approved was a coffee cream and guess what? They withdrew it! In fact, for the aficionados and those of a more advanced age who might remember them, all of these have disappeared over the years:
- Purple One (the original 'Purple One' with Brazil nut, replaced with hazelnut version)
- Chocolate Toffee Cup (now replaced with Caramel Swirl)
- Hazelnut Cracknell (red wrapper)
- Hazelnut Eclair
- Chocolate Nut Toffee Cream
- Malt Toffee (replaced with toffee deluxe as a "new" flavour)
- Milk Chocolate Round (now replaced with Milk Choc Block in green wrapper)
- Peanut Cracknell (blue wrapper)
- Coffee Cream (brown wrapper, same size and shape as the strawberry cream)
- Gooseberry Cream (green wrapper light green fondant with a touch of Gooseberry Preserve covered in milk chocolate)
- Apricot Delight (blue wrapper, square chunk, apricot flavoured jelly covered in milk chocolate)
- Toffee Square (metallic pink wrapper, a small square of very hard toffee)
- Chocolate Truffle (brown wrapper, square chunk, a soft truffle filling covered in milk chocolate)
- Montelimar Nougat
Right, other QS traditions: it's obligatory to make earrings out of the wrappers as well as peel off the cellophane and look at the world through all the different colours. It's also obligatory, assuming you value your life to refrain from the green triangular ones as they are MINE!! I use the plural there in the vain hope that I might find a second one under the 382 strawberry sodding creams.
OK, Christmas is almost over. Most of the tree is now on the carpet and the only reminder of the mountain of food consumed over the festive period is having to pay for it all when the credit card bill arrives mid-January. On the table which only a few short days ago was filled with nuts, nibbles, turkish delight, dates and all the other Yule-time comestibles sits a sad, almost empty tin. It no longer has a lid as Auntie Betty sat on that and it now resembles a reject Frisbee and all that remains of the contents are yes, you guessed it, a few creams. Eventually, even these disappear as their appeal grows relative to the disappearance of all the other food - proof of the adage "owt's better than nowt".
So Christmas and Quality Street gradually fade away for another year apart from one final tradition - the ceremony of the retention of the tin. It goes something like this:-
Shall I chuck this empty tin?
No, it'll come in useful for something or other.
But you say that every year and then we finally get rid of it in November because we're sick of tripping over the damn' thing.
Look, it seems such a waste. Give it to me and I'll use it to put some odds and ends in when I tidy the garage.
Sardonic smirk
No, really, I AM going to tidy the garage
Other half retreats making sotto voce remarks about storing the flying pigs in it
I hope some of this struck a chord with you.
Happy Christmas!
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