It’s a website I just found while trawling around (I love a bit of a Friday morning internet wander).

The blog post I was reading though isn’t about cakes that have gone wrong… it’s crammed full of cakes based on the 1980s… take a look here:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2011/06/sunday-sweets-back-to-80s.html

I bet you never thought you’d see a ‘Back To The Future’ cake featuring a Delorean with gull wing doors that actually open… especially not one 8 feet long!!!

If, like me, you were/area big fan of retro children’s television programmes… and Camberwick Green in particular… take a look at this – http://youtu.be/d27hPy38EyI

It’s Windy Miller getting drunk on scrumpy!

And no… I know what you’re thinking… it’s not a spoof… this was a real episode!

Can you imagine it happening these days? Me neither!

Enjoy… and have a great weekend!

Memories of Camberwick Green:

Bring back any memories?

Windy Miller & Friends… on Camberwick Green

It’s the start of Camberwick Green… one of my favourite television programmes from when I was young (I used to love Trumpton too… but was never quite so keen on Chigley for some reason).

Camberwick Green also featured one of my own quirky memories (apologies to my sister Jane for divulging this secret, but I feel the need to share it!).

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, But Camberwick Green Made My Sister Cry!

If you remember, Camberwick Green started with a character (a different one for each episode) rising out of the aforementioned musical box.  This particular Camberwick Green character was the one that the story would revolve around.

At the end of each Camberwick Green story the closing credits would show the character doing the opposite of what happened at the start… i.e. standing on top of the famous Camberwick Green musical box and descending slowly into it.

As soon as this happenend Jane would burst into floods of tears and wouldn’t stop until after the end of the credits.

The strange thing was… she was 18 at the time… (only joking…  she was probably 2!)

They Don’t Make Television Like They Used To
As you can imagine, now I have a 3 year old and a 2 year old of my own, I get to watch a lot of children’s TV – predominantly on CBeebies.

Computer Generated Tat
Sadly, with the ‘progress’ made in television production, there is an increasing amount of computer generated animation shown… it all looks the same to me and is pretty bland and dull.  Yes, I realise that I’m not exactly the target market but none of these types of programmes seem to ‘hook’ either of our children either.  But it really couldn’t be much more different to the classics like Camberwick Green.

With these programmes it seems like the producers have given up on any sort of creativity or quirkiness… thinking that their slick animation is all that is needed.  How wrong can they be?

Oh Yes They Do! (but it’s about as rare as hen’s teeth!)
But I’m delighted to say that there is one programme which I think will become as iconic, and fondly remembered, as the classics of my day.

Even if you haven’t got children of your own I strongly recommend that you check it out… it’s brilliant.  I just wish they’d make some more because it seems to be a stalwart of the CBeebies schedule… and the BBC just repeat the episodes on a loop (meaning that i have seen some of them at least 10 times or more… they’re still good though, even then).

The animation is brilliant (it couldn’t be more unlike the computer generated stuff if it tried), the creativity in the programmes is stunning (slightly surreal at times and fantastic for it), the interaction between the characters is a joy… and the language used is quirky and charming.

A Treat For You

So my nomination for a current TV programme which is worthy of taking its place alongside Mr Benn, Camberwick Green and Mary, Mungo and Midge in my childhood hall of fame is: Charlie and Lola.

Take a look… it’s on at 6.45am on BBC2 currently. You’ll be glad you did!

What would you nominate to join Camberwick Green in the Childhood TV Hall of Fame?  Leave a comment and tell me…

I received an email today from Pauline, a lovely customer who found www.AQuarterOf.co.uk yonks ago and who who uses our retro sweets in her recipes.

Take a look at Pauline’s Magical Sherbet Lemon Cake… it looks absolutely stunning.

And if, like me, you’re addicted to Angry Birds… elsewhere on Pauline’s blog you can see a Youtube video of an Angry Birds cake! 

I don’t just mean a normal cake with Angry Birds characters drawn on it.

Oh No.

This cake is playable!

Enjoy…

Retro Sweets For Mothers Day

Stuck for a gift for your Mum this Sunday? Why not treat her to her favourite fab retro sweets?

What makes our retro sweets such a great idea as a Mothers Day Gift?

Here’s our top 5 reasons:

1. She will love the retro sweets themselves.

Top Tip: Choose some of the retro sweets she loved as a child… boiled sweets, chewy sweets, liquorice or chocolate sweets – we have over 650 to choose from, so you’re bound to find the perfect sweets here

2. Left it to the last minute?

It’s not a problem.  We can send out your order extremely quickly… and, with our fantastic value courier delivery, your gift can be delivered the next working day after we dispatch it.

3. What if you want to send the sweets straight to your Mum?

Easy!  Just select her address as the delivery address at the checkout… and we’ll sort it!

Retro sweets hampers make stunning Mothers Day gifts

4. Want your gift to be gift wrapped?

No problem… just choose one of our fab gift boxes at the checkout.  It’s the finishing touches like this that make your gift extra special.

Or really push the boat out and send her one of our stunning retro sweet hampers.

5. Want to add a message?

You can, FREE!  It will be printed on one of our cartoony gift message sheets.

So you can see that not only will your Mum love your gift of retro sweets, but we make things easy for you too! 

A happy Mum… and brownie points for you… brilliant!

So order your retro sweets now… while there is still time!

Super Special Offer For All Lions Sweets

First it was Lions Sports Mixture, now it’s the whole blooming Lions sweets range on special offer… but only until this Thursday.

Enjoy Lions sweets at our lowest prices ever…while you can!

I love this time of the year… everything is coming to life, it’s getting a bit warmer… and the days are getting longer.

And to celebrate, we’ve picked out one of our most popular sweets  and we’ve put it on special offer… cutting the price to ribbons.

The lucky sweet this time is Lions Sports Mixture, in its all-new no artificial colours and no artificial flavours format…

We’ve taken a humungous 25% off the price for our 250g bags… but only until the end of the month.

Did you have a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the 1980s?

We badgered and badgered until we got one… claiming that we’d do all sorts of useful things on it like learning those new fangled things called spreadsheets and how to program.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - A Retro Classic

Well fab news… the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is coming back. Now quite what guise it will be in we don’t know yet… will there be the dead flesh rubber keyboard, 4 minute game loading from a cassette player (which frequently ended up with the 1980s equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death… R – Tape Loading Error!) and massively chunky graphics?

Who knows… but it will be fab to see it again.

Read more about the return of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Remember when Saturday afternoon television was wall-to-wall sport?

The BBC had Grandstand with Frank Bough (the darling of BBC sport and then Breakfast Television, until it all went pear-shaped).

And ITV had World Of Sport (remember those little planes that used to fly around in the opening credits trailing a “World Of Sport” banner from its tail?)… and Dickie Davies with that shock of silver in his black barnet. (I couldn’t ever work out why he didn’t see the same hair restoring Grecian 2000 adverts that abounded at that time in order to restore the uniformity to his quiff… but then again I was only 10 at the time!)

The World Of Sport Theme - this was a high budget, special effect in the 1970's!

And at about 4pm of a Saturday World Of Sport would move from its seemingly endless racing coverage to what was, for me, the highlight of the programme… coverage of the Wrestling, from some tiny town hall somewhere or another.

But this wasn’t wrestling like the huge budget American production you see on Sky these days… oh no… this was Wrestling 1970′s England style.

No massively toned bodies -  just plenty of flab – held together by trunks which must have been made of heavily re-enforced elastic, lycra… or anything else that would take the strain!

No choreographed, rock music entrances – two blokes walking to the ring – one bloke stomping, growling and getting booed a lot (the baddie!) and the other smiling, waving & slapping palms (the goodie!)

No high righ flinging themselves off the top rope, no tables, ladders or chairs – but lots of ‘grappling’!

Sounds pants to you? It was brilliant!

Enjoy…

What flavours would you choose for flavour changing  ’3 course chewing gum’?

Remember the flavour changing chewing gum that Willy Wonka created?  The one that that had different tastes as you ate it?

It went from tomato soup… to roast beef and baked potato… and then to blueberry pie and ice cream.

Well there’s a company in London that reckons that it may be able to recreate that, and other delights within a year!

So far they have created 2 prototypes…. one gum changes from strawberry to chocolate (nice!), while the other progresses from passion fruit to foie gras (ugh… of all of the flavours that they had to choose from, why on Earth would you do that!).

If you could choose the flavours for a 3 course meal flavour changing chewing gum, what would you go for?