My three favourite things from the Moonbeam Milk Bar were milky bar chocolate, jersey caramels, aniseed wheels, boysenberry ice cream (dipped in chocolate, of course, duh!) and caramel thickshakes. Three? See, that was always the problem… you go to buy one treat and that becomes 2 and that becomes 3 and then 4 and then…
Milky Bar chocolate was just sweet, smooth pleasure and because real cow’s milk stinks, milky bar is a good substitute. For a while I aspired to be the Milky Bar kid when I grew up but then I realised that once you’re grown up you can’t be a kid, but now I’m grown up I know that I can be a kid whenever I want to be. Here’s how… go swimming in the sea. Jump off scary-high rocks, snorkel around the rocks like Jacques Cousteau, throw and catch a tennis ball in the waves with a friend, and float face up, eyes closed for as long as you can.
Jersey caramels were soft but not tooth-filling removing chewy. Caramel is one of those embracingly, huggingly, gentle flavours, you know, like a warm woolen sweater on an Autumn day. By contrast, aniseed wheels were exotic and sharp and jazzy and ‘out-there’. Aniseed wheels spoke of adventure and risk and thrill. I bet AJ Hackett was an aniseed wheel fan.
Boysenberry ice cream… I heard an American say that Tip Top’s Boysenberry ice cream was almost as good as Ben & Jerrys and I thought, ‘what a stupid thing to say’, because nothing can be better than our Tip Top’s Boysenberry ice cream and some years later I saw Ben & Jerrys live in a shop and sneered at their silly, unnatural flavor combinations. There are rules about sugary, creamy treats… a little like science fiction, they have to be grounded in reality, but I digress. Boysenberry ice cream, two scoops and dipped in chocolate. This is why the Moonbeam Milk Bar was invented and situated on the main street.
And lastly but not leastly (if lastly is the adverb of last, then leastly must be the adverb of least, right?), a caramel thickshake, thickened with some magic powder, not ice cream. Cold, thick and gentle. Perfect. Others in my family preferred raspberry, strawberry, banana and even, gag, lime – none of which resembled the real, natural fruit and so were as artificial and fake as wine gums, which don’t even have wine in them never mind taste like Merlot or Chardonnay.
eN-Zed 