What Sounds & Smells Instantly Transport You Back to CH?

[fra828]

The smell of homemade ginger biscuits cooking takes me back to Hertford cookery school early 1970's!

[Jo]

Yes! One of the few things I ever bake these days are Miss Jukes's ginger biscuits, and I'm transported back to the cookery school every time

[kerrensimmonds]

Yikes! I don't remember any such cookery lesson, but many years later I DID receive the recipe for ginger biscuits, from DRW. I was collecting easy recipies for a Church cookbook, and DRW came up trumps although she did acknowledge that prior to retirememt she had had several private lessons with Betty Jukes. I suspect that the ginger biscuits were a staple item on the agenda?

[Spoonbill]

I was sauntering past a sweetshop yesterday morning and in a moment of dietary insanity (prompted by the sight of rows of giant sweet-jars), I entered the said premises and purchased a bag of Milk Gums....for no more reason than that I'm a stupid fat git who doesn't know what's good for him and who was suddenly struck down by a fit of mindless nostalgia.

I hadn't eaten any sweets at all since the 1970s, so to say that the taste and smell of the things virtually blew me through the wall is putting it mildly. Suddenly I was thirteen years old again and walking back from the Fvck Shop across Lamb Asphalt on a Wednesday afternoon....amazing.

I suggest you give it a try yourself soonest. Even the smell of the things in the bag has the most astonishing Tardis-like effect.

Thoroughly recommended to all non-diabetics.

[Angela Woodford]

If only Lindt still made Chocolate Bunnies!

One nibble - and I'd have been back there, queuing outside the Tuck Room, reckoning up if two or three Bunnies counted as six sweets.

There was another stunt I pulled with a Lindt bar that had a liquid filling - couldn't be divided up too quickly - often got out of the Tuck Room with more than the "six sweets" allowance.

Cunning plan!

[Great Plum]

Lindt still do make chocolagte bunnies at easter time!

[kerrensimmonds]

Yes, they are in two sizes.... mediumish and largeish. They are hollow, wrapped in gold foil with a little red collar with a tiny bell. AArrhh!
My brother gave me one this year (and he always gives me the deer alternative at Christmas) and I am plodding my way through it, nibble by nibble............

[Angela Woodford]

No, no!

These bunnies came in a flat yellow and gold pack, which slid out sideways to open, revealing six flat moulded bunnies divided by corrugated dark paper. The packaging showed happy rabbits hopping and skipping in a meadow. You're thinking of the modern bunny - same sort of presentation as the Lindt Christmas Reindeer. In those days, Lindt did chocolate kittens in the same range.

Amongst the juniors, there was a sort of legend of "chocolate bunnies" - can't remember just what now, but I remember getting several packs of the Lindt bunnies and (creeping v v quietly) slipping a bunny under various junior pillows v early. Sensation! Screams of excitement!

I wish I could remember now when and why the juniors were expecting chocolate bunnies!

[Fjgrogan]

It sounds very like something which I took to Finland for Hanna at Easter, bought in Lidl here, and also available over there but more expensive - no idea whether or not they were made by Lindt and of course they are long gone! I have also seen kittens, puppies etc fairly recently.

I think that 'chocolate bunnies' was a Sixes tradition, but can't remember what the story was behind it.

[Jo]

We had chocolate bunnies in 5s, at least in 1967. I say "had" - actually the only person who was had was me. I don't know if it was other houses besides 6s, or whether 5s juniors just couldn't believe their luck in having possibly the greediest and most gullible first year ever to be able to wind up with promises of chocolate bunnies which seemed to grow with the telling. By "chocolate bunnies night" they were several feet high, solid rather than hollow, and we had to go out at night to find them.

As far as I remember, 5s seniors held themselves disdainfully aloof from such nonsense. I remember going down the fire escape late at night in my dressing gown, with a couple of LIV behind me egging me on, and bumping into a young physics teacher (?Miss Fleming??), who fortunately didn't seem to see anything amiss and just wished us good evening. I can't remember exactly how and when the penny dropped that there weren't going to be any chocolate bunnies, but I do remember feeling monumentally disappointed. Partly because I wasn't going to get a nice feast of chocolate, partly because even at that age it was clear to me how much fun had been had by everyone else at my expense, but mostly because something fun and joyous that might have relieved the awfulness of my first term had turned out to be simply a fairytale. I took it very badly

[englishangel]

I was sauntering past a sweetshop yesterday morning and in a moment of dietary insanity (prompted by the sight of rows of giant sweet-jars), I entered the said premises and purchased a bag of Milk Gums....for no more reason that I'm a stupid fat git who doesn't know what's good for him and who was suddenly struck down by a fit of mindless nostalgia.

I hadn't eaten any sweets at all since the 1970s, so to say that the taste and smell of the things virtually blew me through the wall is putting it mildly. Suddenly I was thirteen years old again and walking back from the Fvck Shop across Lamb Asphalt on a Wednesday afternoon....amazing.

I suggest you give it a try yourself soonest. Even the smell of the things in the bag has the most astonishing Tardis-like effect.

Thoroughly recommended to all non-diabetics.

Was trying to work out where this was, and lo, there was a piece in the paper about it today, in the old part of Amersham, must go and check it out. Don't like milk gums though. cola cubes now mmmm.....

[Angela Pratt 56-63]

Remember the wooden boxes, beneath the horizontal wooden beams in the gym at Hertford? In my time (56-63), these were known as the "chocolate bunny holes"!
I can't remember how it started, but even Miss Park referred to them as that, at least in gym lessons with the younger forms. It was something to do with chocolate bunnies having picnics there at the end of term.... it all sounds very unlikely, doesn't it! However I do know that one summer term, it became fashionable for a small group of seniors (started by swimming team?) to have midnight swims and feasts on several occasions. We (I mean "they"of course..)were only three times nearly caught. Once when we were perched on a fire escape and some staff (can't remember who) came back from a pub(?) underneath, once when we got tothe pool at 1am, only to find some younger staff just leaving and once when some forgotten Penguin biscuits were left in one of the "chocolate bunny holes". You can imagine the silly jokes that the class that discovered them- AND Miss Park- made!, It is one of the few times tht I can remember Miss Park laughing, I have always wondered whether she passed the information on,but it was only a short time before she retired.
Gosh!- that has brought back memories, but after nearly 50 years they are all rather confused, though definitely true I assure you. I am scandalized by how dangerous it all was, what would have happened if DR had found out I can't even imagine -nothing less than death...
Angela ( nee Pratt Ward 8 56-63)

[Fjgrogan]

Hi Angela - at last someone of my vintage! (other than Kerren and Katharine!)

The other thing which all this chat has brought to mind is the habit of celebrating 'locker birthdays' ie the countdown by locker numbers to the end of term, presumably in reverse order.

[Vonny]

The other thing which all this chat has brought to mind is the habit of celebrating 'locker birthdays' ie the countdown by locker numbers to the end of term, presumably in reverse order.

I remember that - "Many Haps."

I have a vague recollection of chocolate bunnies but I don't remember exactly what it entailed in my time - CJ? Maria?

[kerrensimmonds]

And Licking and Sticking?