"England is milk chocolate. Europe is dark chocolate," a man in the Boots drugstore in Brighton told me this morning.
Watching him put bags of potato chips on the rack in the drugstore, I said, "I wish I'd eaten something easier to replace."
He joked that I could take a train through the English Channel tunnel to France and find dark chocolate. I told him that, when I returned home to Canada, I would pass on his news that England is milk chocolate and the rest of Europe is dark chocolate.
Then I left this huge drugstore, unburdened by dark chocolate, and continued my quest, a quest born of accidental eating.
I accidentally ate the Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate which I found soon after my sister and I reached the Brighton place she agreed to watch during its owners' absence. They are house sitting in Seville, Spain. Perhaps they have Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate there, the rest of Europe apparently awash in dark chocolate, unlike England.
I found these treats, 20 or so, in a clear glass jar. I ate a couple, and later a couple more, and over the next few days I ate them all. Resolved to replace them, I went out to try to buy some. For two hours per day for two days, I failed to find Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate.
I looked in grocery stores, including the big ones, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsburys, in the Co-op grocery store. I looked in corner stores, in gift shops, in specialty food shops, and in two health food stores, and found nothing.
In the department store Marks and Spencer (M + S), I found a shelf label advertising, for four pounds, about seven Canadian dollars, a 200g box of Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, but no boxes. "We're out of stock," a clerk told me.
The M + S woman liked it when I called my search a quest, wished me well, and continued using her scanner to record what was in or out of stock in the candy section. The next closest M + S was miles away, "a bus ride," another clerk said, suggesting that I ask Customer Service to get another store to ship some to this store. I commended her enthusiasm but said I would continue looking.
The first M + S woman suggested a place that the Boots clerk suggested Choccywoccydoodah:
This place sells chocolate in the shape of a full-sized human skull, but no Brazil nuts covered in chocolate.
The Boots man also referred me to Thornton's, a high-end chocolate shop in Churchill Square, the downtown shopping mall. Thornton's had a wide variety of chocolates, most of them in gift boxes, and even a whirling post of melted chocolate about the size of the whirling post of meat in a place that makes donairs; but no Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate.
At the start of this third day of two-hour hunts for Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, I had gone into Poundland, England's version of a dollar store, that Canadian oasis of party supplies, affordable snacks, and much else.
In Poundland, I had found Brazil nuts covered in milk chocolate. I decided that they would have to do if I found none covered in dark chocolate. For a pound I bought a 140g, that contained about as many as I ate. I plan to fill the jar before I leave Brighton on Monday, September 12.
Fox hunting would have been easier.
As I wandered, lonely as a cloud, on my quest, I thought about Carol, and Cardinal John Henry Newman's 1800s book The Idea of a University.
I met Carol, born in the 1930s, when my and my stellar spouse Carla's daughter Chelsea was an infant. We were at mass in Sacred Heart Church in Williams Lake, where I live. After mass, Carol came to me and said, "You sure were good with your little girl during mass. She had things to play with, and you interacted so happily and peacefully with her.".
Today, during my chocolate search, I saw a woman pushing a baby buggy, with one baby inside and another riding on the edge. She was talking back and forth with the infants, and the one on the edge seemed keen on all that was around him. A dog walked by and the little boy pointed and said "A woof!" I wish I had commended the woman for being such an indulgent parent. Next time, I'll flatter what good I see in people, and there is plenty to flatter.
Carol and I volunteered to catalogue the library in Williams Lake's Catholic school, which Chelsea attended. We and a third person, Trish, met one evening per week in the library to catalogue books, most of them donated. We taped their edges, found appropriate Dewey Decimal numbers in a cataloguing book the library had, wrote cards, and put them in card pockets we glued into the backs of the books.
This was the late-1990s, a few years before another volunteer and I computerized the library's book collection.
Carol, Trish, and I talked as we worked, for a few hours per week for two school year. I mentioned a book I had that I thought might interest Carol: John Henry Cardinal Newman's mid-1800s The Idea of a University. I read in a 1987-88 Carleton University Victorian non-fiction course. Carol was interested. The next time we met, I brought the book, a paperback I had bought used in Ottawa for a few dollars.
I neither expected nor wanted the book back, but a couple years later I asked Carol how she liked it.
"I lost it," she replied. I said not to worry because I did not want it back.
"Oh, I ordered another one," she said.
Like me searching for Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate to replace ones lost in my stomach, Carol searched out, and got, by special order from Williams Lake's book store, The Open Book, a replacement copy of the book she had lost:
She paid $50, I think, for this book, including shipping, she said. I gracefully accepted it. I still have it, more than ten years later.
I hope this entertained and enlightened you. I thought of the book as I looked for the chocolates. Many words came to mind as I pondered what to call this story: Catholics and Chocolate, John Henry Newman and Brazil Nuts, The Idea of a Universal, and you can think of other titles.
Dare I eat another Brazil nut covered in dark chocolate in England?
(Several hours later, on Friday night....)
I found Brazil nuts covered in dark chocolate, an hour or so after I wrote the above searching tale of woe. Charlie's Sweets Emporium, at 28 Ship Street in Brighton, mere blocks from the English Channel, sold me about 200g in bulk for 2.50 pounds. The little bag, enough to fill the little jar whose nuts I ate, sits by the jar on the cupboard as I type.
This place was the closest to the English Channel of every place I checked for these chocolates. Get closer to the rest of Europe and get dark chocolate, perhaps?
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