Of course, there’s your donuts – the anticipation as you watch them slowly being made for you and then trying to eat them without licking lips (impossible!). Pink, fluffy candyfloss has its connoisseurs, as does rock (otherwise known as Dentist’s Despair round these parts). Sure you could have a lolly, which for the younger generation has nothing to do with laughing out loud (perhaps as an act of schadenfreude if someone drops theirs’ on the floor). But for the authentic, no-bones-about-it BEST seaside snack, it’s got to be ice cream. And it’s got to be in a wafer cone.
And it’s got to be eaten walking along the Prom Prom Prom tiddley om pom pom at Gorleston-on-Sea, Great Yarmouth, Cromer, Sheringham, Wells-next-the-Sea or Sunny Hunny.
Ice cream should be made simply with fresh double cream and fresh milk (and a few other ingredients we won’t bore you with in case you were worried about your waistline) and we reckon simple vanilla is best with the cutting edge addition of a piece of Cadbury’s Flake, thus making a Ninety-Nine. Trust us, this is SOOO on trend.
It’s believed the origin of the 99 is that it was invented by Stephen Arcari in Portobello, Scotland, in 1922 when he came up with the wheeze of breaking a stick of flaked chocolate in half and sticking it in the ice cream. The address of his shop? 99 Portobello High Street. This is an epicurean addition far preferable to Scotland’s other gift to chocolate-based nosh, namely the deep-fried Mars Bar.
99 does NOT represent the price of said dairy-based product, much as you may want it to be.
While we’re at it, you may want to know that ice cream is thought to originate from China, Tang period, AD618-97, and was brought to Europe in 1292 by Marco Polo. We hope it hadn’t melted.
And in the 1950s, a young chemist called Margaret Thatcher (yes, really!) was involved in experiments to see how much air could be pumped into ice cream before it collapsed. The reason why? Ice cream is sold by volume, rather than weight. Yeh, you know what we’re saying.
PS No matter what your dad says, if the ice cream van is chirruping ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’ it does NOT mean they’ve run out of ice cream.
