Childhood sweets or lollies

were not quite the same here as they were in England. We did not have those glorious, magical shops filled with glass jars of mysterious sweets that our mother tried to prevent us from eating.
There were no pear drops or lemon sherbets in my childhood. Other children may have had them from somewhere but I doubt it. 
We did have "Conversation Sweets" - small round discs printed with things like "love me" on them. They were pink, lavender, pale yellow and paler green. There were "licorice all sorts" and "bananas", "ripe raspberries" and "spearmint leaves". There were long thin "jelly snakes" and small sticky peppermints  with red and white stripes. We also had plain chocolate frogs, aniseed balls, gum balls which changed colour as you sucked them and sherbet  in "Wizz Fizz"  packets with a tiny spoon to dig it out. Oh, the glory of that sweet fizziness against our eager tongues! Best of all were the hard pink squares of musk flavoured "pastel" that could be sucked slowly and made to last  or the similarly hard "sticks" of musk, lime or  orange which could be carefully sucked into a point on the end - and then used to jab an annoying sibling or friend.
When permitted we would spend our very  limited pocket money on these things as well as packets of "Life Savers".  The proper way to eat one of  those was to suck it until it was almost not there and then give the resulting paper thin ring a final satisfying "crunch" before continuing to suck the last of it. 
Mum completely banned "Fags" - sweets made to look like cigarettes . They were very popular but if Mum had caught us buying them we would have been beaten with the hair brush and lost all chances of having any sweets. What is more we knew they didn't last like other sweets. 
What we liked most of all was probably the hard home made toffee poured into "patty pans" - small paper cake containers - and sprinkled with "hundreds and thousands" or the same toffee, coloured with cochineal coating an apple on a stick. Those things lasted. We could suck them.
We were patient about sweets. It made them last.
Of course there were more expensive sweets but we rarely saw those. I was in my teens before I found out what a "Polly Waffle" was - a tube of waffle like biscuit filled with marshmallow and covered with chocolate. I was similarly in my teens before I tasted a "Violet Crumble" - essentially a bar of honeycomb covered in  chocolate -  and an adult before I tasted a "Crunchie" and decided they were superior.
We would sometimes be given single squares from a "grown up" block of chocolate or Crown Mints or humbugs - "black and white" peppermints.
My paternal grandfather understood our need for something sweet occasionally. He would buy our grandmother "Scotch mints" - small balls of peppermint that were relatively soft and slip us a packet of peppermint flavoured Life Savers  or some Conversation Sweets as well. I doubt she ever bought herself anything like that. 
My maternal grandmother liked "jubes". They were soft and probably suited her false teeth. We children did not think much of them. They did not last and could not be pulled apart in layers like licorice all sorts. We preferred her to buy cashew nuts - a rare luxury back then -  the only nut she could manage. She bought them from a shop run buy people my grandfather knew. It was probably the closest thing to a sweet shop we children knew.
So, where did we get our sweets? 
For the most part we went with our paternal grandfather on a "Short walk". The "Short" in this case was the surname of the people who had first owned the delicatessan on Jetty Road. By the time we children were old enough to go there it was run by a Mrs Clements and members of her family. It sold just about everything you needed in the way of groceries and newsagent items. 
There, behind the glass,  on a tray were the sweets - four for a penny or the block of pastel for a penny. Mrs Clements knew full well what we would choose if we could. One glorious afternoon she even told us, "Now just be patient. The box only came in this morning. If it is pastel you want you will have to wait a moment."
We waited without moving while she went "out back". Would she find the box? We held our breath and then let it out with an anticipatory sigh of pleasure. She opened the box and my brother and I spent our pennies on those squares which seemed to last, if not quite forever, such a long time.