Friday, April 10, 2009

UWOTD

I'm not sure if we had Coca Cola or Pepsi products when I was growing up in N. Ireland but I do know we never drank any in our house.  Maybe we were too poor.  Maybe Catholics didn't drink those products back then - unless they came in Holy Water flavour !

I mentioned in an earlier post that I loved Creamola Foam in my youth, a drink made up from a spoonful of flavoured crystals and a dash of water.  Well we also had bottled drinks and in fact we had a bottling plant on the outskirts of our little town and so we had the luxury of having their products delivered to us every week.

The drinks lorry would arrive in the street and kids would rush out as if it was the ice cream van. After placing our order with the delivery man, we'd stagger in with a crate of mixed drinks and I can tell you this was quite a task for a wee fella as the bottles were made of glass. The clinking that they made as we brought the crate into the house is one of those childhood noises that never leaves the memory, even mine !

Cream Soda was one of my favourites and still is.  We'd also get a few bottles of still orange,  a few of actual lemonade and naturally the local favourite, Irn-Bru (pronounced Iron Brew) which was really a Scottish speciality but both countries had a close relationship in such matters.

Anyway, the point of this soft drinks history lesson is that any soft drink, no matter what flavour was involved, was called 'a mineral' in Ulster.  I think it's a bit like the way a 'soda' is used in the US.

Mineral : a soft drink of any flavour.

So when you'd go to a house on a warm summers day and be offered a mineral, you'd not expect to be handed a lump of quartz or gypsum.  If the mineral lorry had just been round, you'd have a good choice of several flavoured drinks and in my case, I'd hope that there would be a bottle of Irn-Bru or Cream Soda still left.

If not, I just might just have to drink the Holy Water !!

7 comments:

  1. We never had Coke or Pepsi either - don't know why - but we did have Tizer and, my faourite, Dandelion and Burdock (same colour as Coke, anyway!) I have never tried Irn-Bru (no reason why, just never come across it) but I did like their marketing campaign of a few years back. "Made in Scotland. From girders."

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  2. Like wot Daphne said - (saves repeating it.) Those bottled drinks were made by Corona - at least they were in Bristol. The stoppers were attached by metal wire through the neck of the bottle.

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  3. We had this too, in North Wales. We used to call him the pop man. Dandelion and burdock and Tizer were my favourites. Never did understand American Cream Soda though.

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  4. I remember the Corona lorry coming round!! You used to get 3d back on the bottles.

    I liked the green one, and the cherryade. I loooved Tizer, but was never allowed to have any. I know the boys had it, so ... I dunno, perhaps Mum thought it was too exciting for girls. LOL!

    I wasn't allowed bubblegum either. OR blackjacks or fruit salads. Or mojos. I was a depprived child!

    Four a penny, they were. An OLD penny!

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  5. Frosty rootbeer and orange or grape Crush...those are the 'pops' I remember as a child. A rare treat.

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  6. Cream soda is now and has always been my favorite. Vanilla, sugar, carbonated water, and caramel coloring. Who could ask for anything more!!??

    In various places here in U. S. of A. a soft drink is called soda, pop, sodapop, tonic, cold drink, Coke (regardless of the brand) and a few other things as well.

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  7. I was never allowed bubblegum either, Jay, or chewing gum. I think it was because they were regarded as 'common'. ;)

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