Lantern Corner Sweet Shop

This sweet shop is packed with children during the holidays and after school all calculating the best way to spend their money. Prices are higher than some places but the range is outstanding; they even sell cigarette-​shaped candy in cigarette-​packet shaped packets. They have a range of delicious more adult sweets — marzipan bars, luxury chocolate — alongside the lollies, sugar mice and rows and rows of jars for weighing out. Staff are friendly and helpful and if you have a yearning to have plastic sweet jars in your home (I wanted one for a ‘guess the number of sweets’ competition) then they’ll help you out free of charge.

This is a proper traditional old-​fashioned sweet shop. Linked to the milkshake bar next door (Cow, excellent), it’s only a very tiny little place. However, they have racks and racks of jars of sweets from floor to ceiling, and the windows are full of lollipops and other tempting looking treats. Unfortunately, what is not so old-​fashioned is the price — I think you pay hugely over the odds. It’s great fun browsing all the old favourite sorts (rhubarb and custards, toffee bon bons, sherbert lemons mmmm) and having them weighed out for you (sadly in grams now rather than quarters — am I sounding old yet?) — but I still find the bill depressing enough to counteract all the excitement and generally choose to buy my sweets elsewhere.