Cherry Lips... Sherbet Dips... Flying Saucers... Liquorice whips... Sour Plums... Army and Navy Mixture...

THE names take you right back to childhood. This isn't a sweet shop - it's time travel. It's enough to get you counting your pocket money again. In Yorkshire, sweets are often known as "spice" - which must make Alison Moore the original Spice Girl. Since she had to give up her first career, she's been building up a sweetie empire, with shops and stalls in a number of Yorkshire towns, including the latest one in the Market Place in Thirsk.

"I've always enjoyed making chocolates as a hobby so it seemed logical to start selling sweets," she says. "I didn't want to be like everyone else - just another sweet or chocolate shop, so I decided to concentrate on old fashioned varieties."

Cinnamon balls... Zubes... Rhubarb and Custard...

It set her off on a nationwide search to find the old favourites. Many are no longer made. Some were made in very small quantities by very small companies. Others have started making some lines again at her suggestion. "I just listened to what people want and tried to find them," she says.

And in they come, exclaiming with delight at finding old favourites. Two elderly ladies are seeking lollipops - "The best ones for eating sherbet with," they say - and suddenly, you can see just what they were like when they were eight years old. A young man comes from the bookies with an order for giant strawberries, and a couple dither between cinder toffee and treacle toffee and decide - very sensibly - to have both.

The shop in Thirsk is tiny and narrow - just like sweet shops always used to be. And it's presided over on Tuesdays by Jean and Alan Keable Smith, who love the shop and know their sweets. And who also do the splendid window displays.

"We get plenty of children in, of course," says Jean, "but we get nearly as many elderly people. They love to see the sweets from their childhood. You hear them going 'Ooh' when they spot a favourite." She has her own fond memories of khayli - "a sort of sherbet that went bright yellow when you licked it" - which not even Alison has succeeded in finding.

There were queues on the pavement on the day the shop opened last month and it is already busy - and that's before the tourists come. Though they've already had some American customers "who wanted to buy everything and take it back with them", says Jean.

Although the shop relies on old favourites, there's always something new in store too. Last week it was coconut carrots and Easter lollies. "It's a bit like a clothes shop," says Alison. "You don't want to see exactly the same stock every time you go in. I like to keep it interesting." And there's a steady supply of truly revolting sweets designed to appeal to children.

"Brain lickers, toxic waste, garbage trolleys" says Jean, laughing at the daftness of it all and then showing gobstoppers the size of cricket balls, which should probably come with a health warning.

And no one's left out. Not liking to see diabetics staring wistfully at the forbidden displays, they now have a decent and steadily expanding range of sugar free sweets, including gummi bears and lollipops for children as well as sugar free/low sugar jams and biscuits. Alison is opening a shop in Leeds devoted entirely to sugar-free and wheat-free products.

But although Jean and Alan look the part splendidly and the shop could come straight out of a story book, some things can never be the same.

If you want an easy measure of inflation, then buy some blackjacks. They always used to be four for a penny - and an old penny at that. Now they're 2p each - around 20 times what they were when we were children. "I can give you old fashioned sweets," says Alison, "but I'm sorry I can't give you the old fashioned prices as well."

l Moore's Allsorts, 59 Market Place, Thirsk. Open seven days a week.

UNCONNECTED with Alison but offering a similar range, www.aquarterof.co.uk is a website guaranteed to set your mouth watering. Run by a former marketing man in search of the sweets of his 1970s childhood, it started a year ago and carries over 400 lines of sweets, lollies, sherbet and chocolate. It has a big export business. Just think of all those people in far flung corners of the world chewing on blackjacks, sucking on sherbet lemons and picking strands of sweet tobacco from between their teeth.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

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