Theme Thursday - Candy

When I was little there was a dairy just round the road from school for a few years that a nice asian guy bought, and called it the Smile Shop.
He was really friendly, and I even remember him teaching us the secret Smile Shop handshake.
I remember some of my favourite lollies were these little red hearts, which were actually quite fat, pink, hard-boiled candies, and they all came individually wrapped in little white packets with pretty hearts on them.

Ohh, and when I was even smaller, there was a dairy further up the main street, which I believe might be a hairdressers now? Or perhaps it was the store next door.
Bear in mind our main street is little. (Ha, I just about wrote 'lyttel' three times then).
It was a lot smaller, I can't remember who ran it, I think it was a young guy working in there most of the time, but I remem- wait, no, there was most definitely a nice woman working in there for a while, and she liked me, I was rather little at the time, maybe five?
Anyway, I remember this little soft toy pink pig that sat up behind the counter on a shelf above the cigarettes. It had a bean filled body so was also floppy, and really, really soft fur.
I remember I wanted that pig for so long, and was over the moon when 'Daddy' bought if for me one evening whilst buying his Benson & Hedges, which he used to smoke back then.

I suddenly remember the butcher that used to be next door. Geez, it's been years since there's been a butcher. I must have been really small then. I don't even know how there was ever enough demand for a butcher in our little town!
Anyway, whenever mum or dad went in to buy meat, I remember he'd always give me a savaloy. Ha.

Cute memories.

I wish that things were the way they were back then.
No one held grudges.

A wise boy once told me that good friends will always make up.

And now I'm crying at the keyboard.

Don't you remember, when you were a child?
I don't care how old or young you are, think back.

You know, you'd have a fight at school, and you'd go home, but you knew, you just knew, that the next day everything would be okay.

And it almost always was.

In those simpler days of candy, playtime and sport, everything seemed easily resolved.
Nothing was a big deal.
No stress.

This sounds almost ridiculous to say,
but if I have learned something since those days,
it is that it seems to be the people that you become closest to that seem to eventually disappear.
Those ones that aren't too close, but are still supportive, they don't get fed up.
They hang around.
They don't have to see you too often.

And those you love,
well.

Maybe they just stop loving you back.

Geez, someone get me a gin, will ya?