One of the things I used to like about going shopping with Mum when I was a kid was when Mum would let me have ten pence to buy some penny sweets. You’d take your ten pence piece, and exchange it for a little white paper bag with your own selection of yummy sweeties safely stored inside. Looking back, I always remember having trouble deciding what to eat first, and thinking that there was an almost never ending supply in that little paper bag. Ten pence wouldn’t stretch far these days, but in the days of the half pence you could have ended up with twenty sweets in there, which to a four year old certainly appeared close to infinite.
There were two ways in which you could choose your sweeties. If the shop was a small one (e.g. a corner newsagent) then quite often there would be a tray containing all the various sweets stocked, usually under a piece of glass meaning it was only accessible from the shopkeeper’s side of the counter. You’d point a little digit at the sweets you wanted, and the shopkeeper would count up the price as they popped them into the bag.