It’s summer and the icecream parlour beckons. If it’s available my choice will always be rum and raisin, and the first taste will bring me back to Killybegs and a taste memory from my childhood.
My grandparents kept a tin of sweets on a shelf above the cooker and the only sweets that were ever kept in that tin were rum and butter toffees, presumably bought by the quarter from the big glass jars in Molloy’s shop.
My grandfather drove a lorry for the council and a few times, when I wasn’t much more than a toddler and presumably to get me out of the house away from under my grandmother’s feet, I went down to Bridge street with him and we wandered off on adventures collecting gravel and stone chippings for road repairs. In the cab the ashtray held a supply of those rum and butter toffeees, that happy taste of my early childhood.
Granda must have retired when I was five years old so memories of the quarry in Laghey and of the three lorries that were based in the Killybegs depot behind the fire station are early ones. I recall a feeling of sadness when I discovered that the lorries, each of which had its own colours, had been sprayed blue and yellow to bring them into uniformity with some directive from the council, and sheltering from the rain in a yellow roadworks shelter, and my outrage when big Charlie who drove one of the other trucks dared to get behind the wheel of granda’s truck and move it.
And wasn’t the other lorry driver Patrick Dorrian who lived in the terrace on Bridge St next to the council depot?
Those three lorries were my boyhood equivalent of Thomas the Tank Engine; each with its own personality and happy adventures across the county. And the flavour of those early childhood memories is of rum.
My granny died in 1973 and soon afterwards the sweet tin was empty. For years now I’ve hunted for those toffees. In my mind they were toffees for sucking rather than chewing, each wrapped in green and white paper. It’s such an obvious and classic combination that you would think they would be easily available but none of the old-style sweetshops I come across ever has them in stock.
Some other sweets of my childhood survive; liquorice allsorts of course, iced caramels have made a return, barley sugar can be found in some shops, white coated bonbons are easily found, Emeralds aren’t what they used to be, while those rum and butter toffees remain elusive.
And every now and then I pick up a small bar of Fry’s chocolate cream, the combination of dark chocolate and mint fondant that was a particular favourite of my granny. But mostly, for the taste memory of childhood, my own search of lost times, it’s rum and raisin icecream.
Colin Brady 