Small, round, coveted, and colourful. This is what jazzies are to a five year old. They are always behind the high countertops in the sweatshops back home, and always cost far more than the 10p mixtures in price.
Unfortunately, a 10p mixture is the most that many five year olds of 1995 can afford, unless pocket money coincides with a treat from grandma and grandad. In this case, the price of 30p for a bag of jazzies instantly becomes accessible, with 20p still left over for a mixture!
This is if you buy it from the sweet shop. One kind of jazzies were never from the sweet shop. They were always from a bell jar that smelled of tobacco, Cleo's dog smell, and wood varnish. Inside the jar they sat safe and snug on top of Grandad's desk drawer, waiting intently for gnarled, soft fingers to prise off the lid, and for young stubby ones to snatch them away before it closed again.
The circular, smooth creamy drops of milk chocolate explode in a fountain of richness over the child's taste buds, followed by the exciting crunch of multicoloured hundreds and thousands that stick to and tickle the tongue. It is a mixture of sweetness and excitement, made better only by the rarity of this glamorous treat.
Those jazzies were different. They were better than the shop jazzies. Thicker, bigger, with extra coloured balls of sugar to crunch and swill and suck. Handmade jazzies from the sweet stall in the market, ones that had once earned fierce competition from older boys who wanted them all to themselves, but who could never finish a whole jar between them.
These jazzies were 'Grandad's Jazzies', and the best. Eema was always making dinner when they appeared (sometimes when playing in the rich oak bookcase lined office, or pretending to watch 'Cats' in the living room, or snuck into the small palm five at a time to keep little fingers away from the whiskey stash hidden in the old globe of the earth), so these were also secret jazzies.
Private, secret and special, and warm over the tonge, like the fingers of the giver, full of patience only grandad has (evidenced by letting you hide in the footwell of his desk as you eat them). Each is savoured and treated with extra dignity, because if grandad is the one giving them, they can't possibly be worth anything less.
And for a child - made of sugar and spice, or snips and snails and puppy-dogs tails - that means a smear of chocolate over the face, and sugar balls dripping down their t-shirt. Grandad is prepared for this - because he's grandad - and has he wet-wipes already handy to wash away all evidence (and avoid Eema's wrath).
This is a secret. Sort of. A brief childish, secret that ends with a key turning in a drawer, a hug that smells of pen ink, tobacco, and chocolate, before the sound of children's feet running down the long hallway to the kitchen, asking Eema where the reading books are as Grandad follows, pack of cards in hand for the evening game of solitaire (which Eema will yell at him for - ‘taking up the kitchen table again!’).
I am 20-odd years old, and in February 1998, I stopped eating jazzies.
~*~
A short bit of an idea I had after reading a dedication by a friend on deviant art. You can probably guess, but this is about my Grandad, or one of them - a Mr Krzykawski (Polish), who always had a bell jar of chocolate jazzies in his desk for me when I was little.
He died when I was seven, so I remember very little of him, I can't even remember his face outside of a photograph, because I saw him infrequently due to travelling distance. But I remembered that bell jar full to the brim with chocolate jazzies on top of his desk (and fighting with my then 12 and 15-year-old cousins over it).
Here's a picture of some Jazzies to torment your taste buds *~evil-grin~*
