A bit of home?
Dec. 24th, 2020 04:17 pmMany of my surviving relatives still live in the U.K. I've never lived there myself, but products from the British Isles were very much a part of my childhood, especially around Christmas time. When my grandparents were still alive, they used to send us brown paper packages tied up with string, or sealed with brown paper tape that stank of cod liver oil when it got wet. And what was inside those mysterious packages?
Tins of toffees, fruit drops, wine gums and English biscuits, many depicting gorgeous landscapes on their lids. Tins of tobacco for my dad. Once empty, many of these tins were the perfect size to store crayons, jewellery and other little treasures I wanted to keep. Children's annuals and other books - it was in one of those packages that I got my first Borrowers book as well as a copy of The Young Visiters [sic] by Daisy Ashford, age 9. There were other presents besides the books. One year I got a printing set. It had tiny little rubber letters and punctuation marks which you had to squish into wooden holders to spell something out, then rub it over an ink pad and stamp onto paper. I think there were also some picture stamps - possibly of little animals - so you could illustrate your stories. I got a fair bit of mileage out of that set; we replaced the ink pads numerous times and some of the tiny letters probably got sucked into the Hoover's mighty maw... but it was really a great toy.
Nowadays I sometimes order British products, partly for their nostalgia value. Last year or possibly the year before, I ordered some items directly from Fortnum & Mason in London but this year, I was able to find what I was looking for at A Bit of Home in Mississauga:
https://abitofhome.ca
Mind you, there's one bit of home that I don't think any British expats would be keen to import - that highly infectious new strain of the novel Coronavirus:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-new-strain-uk-what-we-know/
It has definitely put a damper on any international travel plans for now. Still, it's great to be able to access a bit of nostalgia, right here at home!
Tins of toffees, fruit drops, wine gums and English biscuits, many depicting gorgeous landscapes on their lids. Tins of tobacco for my dad. Once empty, many of these tins were the perfect size to store crayons, jewellery and other little treasures I wanted to keep. Children's annuals and other books - it was in one of those packages that I got my first Borrowers book as well as a copy of The Young Visiters [sic] by Daisy Ashford, age 9. There were other presents besides the books. One year I got a printing set. It had tiny little rubber letters and punctuation marks which you had to squish into wooden holders to spell something out, then rub it over an ink pad and stamp onto paper. I think there were also some picture stamps - possibly of little animals - so you could illustrate your stories. I got a fair bit of mileage out of that set; we replaced the ink pads numerous times and some of the tiny letters probably got sucked into the Hoover's mighty maw... but it was really a great toy.
Nowadays I sometimes order British products, partly for their nostalgia value. Last year or possibly the year before, I ordered some items directly from Fortnum & Mason in London but this year, I was able to find what I was looking for at A Bit of Home in Mississauga:
https://abitofhome.ca
Mind you, there's one bit of home that I don't think any British expats would be keen to import - that highly infectious new strain of the novel Coronavirus:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-new-strain-uk-what-we-know/
It has definitely put a damper on any international travel plans for now. Still, it's great to be able to access a bit of nostalgia, right here at home!