Thursday, March 05, 2009

UWOTD

As it's perpetual summer here in sunny Buttonwood Bay, I thought I'd pick an Ulster word (although maybe used in other parts of the UK and even elsewhere - it's often impossible to know) that always reminds me of summer growing up in N. Ireland.

The ice cream van would come down our street almost daily during the long hot summers of my childhood (yes I know they probably weren't long or hot but we always think they are when looking back on them) and we'd rush after it until it stopped like it was some sort of motorised Pier Piper.  We'd usually get soft scoop cones and if we had enough pocket money, we'd get a Cadbury's chocolate flake added to it and that would be called a 99. We'd sometimes get lollypops or now and again we'd get sliders.  We didn't often get sliders from the ice cream van as they were something we could fix outselves if mum had a tub of ice cream in the freezer.

A slider : a rectangular block of ice cream about an inch thick between two wafers.

We'd eat a slider with all the reverence and tradition that is now used here for eating oreos. Some would simply lick the sides and wear away the ice cream until you got to the point when you could squeeze the wafers together and the remaining ice cream would ouse out and be licked off,  leaving the complete wafers as a sort of bonus at the end.  Others would bite into the wafer/ice cream block and eat it all that way.

I was a side licker !!

Maybe anyone reading this from foreign parts could let me know what you call such an ice cream treat as I'm sure they exist in most countries.

6 comments:

Daphne said...

Of course, I'd never heard of oreos until very recently and have still never actually eaten one. But as fo the ice cream - "slider" is new to me, and a good word too! Here in Leeds it was just "do you want a cone or a wafer?"

Anonymous said...

I hate it when people ruin good ice cream with bad wafers! I think of the wafers on sliders as a way of holding the icecream but definitely not a bonus at the end. Still ate them though! (I don't remember calling them sliders but can't think what we did call them.)

Jennytc said...

We called them wafers and I was a 'side licker' too!

Debby said...

We'd call it an ice cream sandwich. I'm a side licker also.

A slider here is a slang term for a hamburger.

I don't like 99's.

Don't even get me started on ice lollies!

Anonymous said...

Hmmm ... well, am I from foreign parts, since you're over there, and I'm over here, I wonder?

We didn't call them sliders. We just called them 'wafers'. And it was a choice between those and cornets. Dad liked wafers, but I liked cornets because they were easier to bite into without making your teeth cold!

Jan said...

We always called them wafers, not very original I know, but I always ate mine exactly like you. Happy days.

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