When I moved down South in 1998 one of the first differences I noticed (apart from the weird accents) was that you couldn’t get certain foods and sweets down here.

For a start, no supermarkets, or fish and chip shops, sold Holland’s Pies. No. Not Dutch spies. These are the North’s best food. As their site says, “Say ‘pies’ in the North of England and you’ll get a one word answer… Holland’s”, which you may think is some marketing slogan, but it’s actually true. Before I moved down here, I’d never ever seen another maker of pies.

Anyways, I could survive without Holland’s, I mean it wasn’t like I never ate anything apart from pies. The main problem was the lack of standard sweets. Down here they don’t sell Sarsaparilla Tablets or proper Northern Pear Drops. They do sell what they call “Pear Drops”, but they’re not real Pear Drops, which have to be yellow and red coloured on the same sweet, not red or yellow, that’s just wrong. I just found this great site though, which sells both Sarsaparilla Tablets and Northern Pear Drops. Isn’t the Internet great?