Jelly Babies

Years ago, we were in London with the kids at a performance of Phantom of the Opera, and Mike and Marley came back from intermission with (among other spoils of war) a small plastic bag full of soft candies. These candies were so odd in shape, texture, and flavour that neither child would eat them, and they ended up, as people’s unwanted leftovers so often do, in Stan’s possession.

He has been looking for more ever since. He absolutely loved them. No other sweet – not licorice toffees, not Twizzlers, not Popeye candy cigarettes – has ever pleased the Ruecker palate more than the weird gummies from the staircase concession stand at Her Majesty’s Theatre. As the original bag had no label on it, his search has involved a long sampling of unlikely confectionary items – most of which, I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot cattle prod. Alas, to no avail.

The key to the mystery was finally provided by a BBC quiz show which Maryanne got us hooked on. On an episode of QI, the host, Stephen Fry, posed a question about a “sweetie” popular in the UK. He passed around bowls of samples to the panelists. “That’s it!” cried Stan. “That’s the candy.” And our first point of business in London became the location and purchase of “jelly babies.”

The jelly baby is not a “gummy” per se, but a soft fruit candy with a powdery white coating. (“What is this stuff on them, anyway?” a panelist asked. “Cocaine,” rapped back Fry.) They have an unheimlich shape, like a mummified Cupid, and according to QI, you can tell whether a woman has children by watching how she eats them. Childless women tend not to bite the candy’s head off, while mothers, apparently, have no scruples about mere confectionary decapitations – having, one assumes, already resisted the urge to eat their own young in the flesh.

In any case, jelly babies are readily available here, and Stan has been on a bender with them since we arrived. “What is it you actually like about these ghastly, horrid, beastly things?” I asked. Stan got a far-away look.

“They have a surface that’s slightly harder than the interior,” he said slowly, gazing out the window.

“And...?”

“It –” His eyes, with a limpid look, seemed to get even bluer, and the shadow of an unwilling smile just touched the corners of his mouth. “– yields slightly to your tooth.”

So there, such as it is, you have it.