As soon as I pulled this prompt from the Measly Jar of Motivation, I smiled as a childhood image came flooding back – rosebud sweets!
I haven’t tasted on of those sweets in almost forty years! (Lord, that makes me sound SO old! LOL)
When I was a wee girl, before I was old enough for school and then during the school holidays, I would go to the local post office on a Tuesday with my Wee Gran to collect her pension. The postmaster, Mr Stirling was a character. He was a lovely old man who always had time for a blether and a joke with his customers but equally important, he kept a dish of sweets beside him to give to the children who came into the post office.
The dish was actually the plastic lid off one of the big jars of traditional “old fashioned” sweets that shops used have lined up on shelves behind the counter.
Usually there was a lengthy queue in the post office on pension day. I would stand patiently with my gran as we edged closer to the counter. There were always two people serving – Mr Stirling and a lady called Agnes. She too had a dish of sweets beside her, but she didn’t always offer you one. I don’t think she liked children that much and to be honest, I was a little scared of her.
If Mr Stirling served my gran, before he’d stamp her pension book and count out the cash, he would offer me the dish and say to take a sweetie. Sometimes, when he was passing the pension book and pension back across the counter, he would say to take a second sweet.
Those small pink rose scented fondant sweets were delicious. To this day they are one of the scents and tastes of childhood.
A few years later, Mr Stirling retired, and another postmaster took over. The first time after that when I accompanied my gran to the post office, I was a little bit anxious. Would this new man know that he was supposed to give the children a sweet? Would he think I was too old to get a sweetie?
I needn’t have worried. The dish of rosebud sweets was still there.
Years went by and I grew up and became a teenager, while my wee gran simply grew older. Occasionally when I was in my late teens, I would be trusted to go and collect her pension for her. As I stood in the queue feeling both grown up at being trusted with such an important errand and about sixty or seventy years too young to be in the queue, another thought entered my mind. Was I now too old to be offered a rosebud sweet?
It turns out I wasn’t. I guess you’re never too old to enjoy a rosebud sweet.
Image sourced via Google- credits to the owner (no watermark)
Coral McCallum 