Trails
A word has come spiralling down the rabbit hole from my childhood: ‘Shellety Horn’ – our word for snail.
I am wondering if that was an Irish thing. Or perhaps it was a Cork word, or maybe, just maybe, it was our family’s special word? There were others too, such as Fatty Pigs (wood lice). Then there was Goody Bread, an impromptu bread & butter pudding in a teacup, made with torn bread, a generous sprinkling of sugar and sultanas, all soaked in hot milk.
Now that I am on a trip down memory lane, milky puddings seemed to have featured strongly throughout my early days. As well as bread & butter pudding, we were regularly fed semolina, rice pudding, tapioca and tinned fruit with custard, with cream or ice cream served with everything. We always had a block of vanilla or raspberry ripple in our freezer but that didn’t stop us from walking to the shop most days for a whipped cone, an ice cream wafer or a glass of fizzy drink topped with a blob of ice cream. But best of all, there were Wibbly Wobbly Wonders. These Irish ice lollies (popsicles) had a two tone strawberry and banana ice cream base, then a layer of jellified lemon curd, half smothered in chocolate.
Those lazy ice cream days hold memories of sunny Sunday drives to the seaside with my friend’s family. (We didn’t have a car). Martha and I would spend the journey kneeling up (sans seat belts, of course) waving at drivers in the cars behind and then rolling around on the back seat in fits of giggles when someone waved back or pulled faces at us. Never the best back seat traveller, I would fight car sickness throughout the hot, rough and tumble ride, which always featured a treat. Yes, you’ve guessed it, an enormous whipped ice cream cone.
The thing is, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance.
After almost 25 nauseous, stomach-churning years, I now live a (virtually) dairy-free life. (These days, the only ‘Wibbly Wobbly Wonders’ I get close to are the ones staring back at me in that full length mirror).
But back to the above image.
The Shellety Horn that once lived in this lovely, milky, lime-washed ‘des res’ has long gone, but he has left a trail of childhood memories behind.
I have a lovely update to add to this post. See here for Shellety’s exotic cousin!
So many delights in this memoir—Goody Bread is so much better a name for that treat than what we called it: Bread, Milk and Sugar (ours didn’t have the sultanas)! Now I realize how plebeian we were in our nomenclature! 😉 It’s funny what ‘insider’ names cultures and groups and families can develop and embrace for favorite things, and even more intriguing to me how many of those comforts are fairly universal. Thanks for the happy trip down Memory Lane! 🙂
Thank you for your-far-from-Plebeian, eloquent response! 🙂
It seems funny thinking of ice cream with it pouring down here P … but wibblywobblywonders are new to me .. I remember Fab 208 lollys with the top of half hundreds and thousands dipped in choc … raspberyy mivvis ..
Anyhow … LOVE ‘Shellety Horn’ so very descriptive !
Yes, very unseasonal of me but that ‘trail’ of thought just couldn’t be stopped on its milky way! 🙂
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Shellety horn has to be the best name for snails! I too grew up on milk puddings, growing up on a dairy farm, there was milk and butter in everything.
It must have been lovely to grow up on a farm! I have to admit that I only have to smell milk and I feel instantly sick!! 🙂
Wibbly Wobbly Wonders – yes indeedy! The ‘Goody Bread’ was a regular thing for us in the North too – my mum always called it ‘Panayda’ (no doubt spelt wrong but that’s how it was pronounced) and if we just came in and grabbed some bread and jam, it was called ‘a piece’. 🙂
I believe that the ‘Wibblies’ are still available! 🙂
I know that I found some a few years ago and my daughters were less than impressed…my rose-tinted taste buds may have over-exaggerated how tasty they were!
memory lane so often has thornless roses along the way, snails were just snails to us but my Dad call woodlice – tanks because they could travel over everything, my mum made us tizer floats, a blob of ice cream in a glass of tizer, I also had the milky puddings in childhood but sans the cream and ice cream, it was in the days of rationing, I’m old, and the whipped ices are part of my children’s childhood,
yes they didn’t used to look for intolerance much when my children were children, you seem to be a similar age, things are a bit better now, I’m glad you finally got a diagnosis and feel better for it, Frances
I like the idea of ‘tanks’ – like little armadillos really! Regarding the very sensitive subject of age…it has been many years since that diagnosis…. 🙂
Oh the memories!!!! We called them “Sheila Shellida” (spelling!) I gave my kids “goody”, Glad you are feeling better 🙂
Thanks Cath – that’s a new one on me!
lovely post, I remember Goody Bread, and Pandy, mashed potatoes with LOADS of butter!
Oh, I never heard of Pandy – sounds delicious!