Bittersweet: A Memoir. Angus Kennedy
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of cancer—bedridden, she had given up completely.
Booze was her new master, and at nine years old, mine was fast becoming candy. It was my job to rescue the candy and checks in the mail, or the mortgage wouldn’t get paid. I was unaware that our mortgage was heavily in arrears and I didn’t know that not all households were like mine, but I had a feeling that things were not right.
In essence, I should not be the world’s leading chocolate taster today; I should be on the scrap heap!
Despite the somewhat uncomfortable combination of candy, cancer, and empty spirit bottles badly hidden around the house, it wasn’t until later in life that I realized my childhood home was not normal by any standards at all. It was, however, a brilliant place for learning about life and the confectionery industry. At the time, I ate candy to keep living; nowadays I eat it for a living. I am still dependent on the stuff today.
The Kennedys’ unlikely candy school took place in our Edwardian family house in Muswell Hill, North London. The dogs—Peggy and Sheba—and I ate the sweets, my mum knocked back the vodka, and my dad struggled with the malignant tumor feeding off him.
Oh, and the banks didn’t want to be left out either, so they were swarming like wasps for their fix of what seemed to be an imminent repossession. It was a magnificent cocktail of catastrophe, high sugar intake, alcohol consumption, and my disastrous education.
Candy samples from confectioners around the world arrived regularly through the letterbox, and both the wretched animals and I couldn’t wait to see what goodies were in store. We were all hungry. The free samples were from companies that wanted my mother to write about them. I was keen to beat the dogs to the door, as the mail contained what was often my breakfast too.
My mother, when she eventually woke up from her naps on the desk, wrote about these new-to-market confections for the family confectionery magazine, which today is called Kennedy’s Confection. The journal, of which I am now editor, is one of the oldest business journals in the world; it even survived two world wars. Though the original name was Confectionery News in 1890, it has only changed names twice in 125 years. At this time, during the 1970s, it was called Confectionery Manufacture and Marketing, which was a mouthful for our customers, most of whom were learning English as a foreign language, so I changed it to its current title, Kennedy’s Confection, in 1990.
The family company was started by my father, John Kennedy, and my mother, who used the pen name Margaret Lang, who together acquired the magazine in 1971, along with many other magazine titles, including a turkey industry magazine, an ice-cream magazine, and something called Chemistry and Industry Buyer’s Guide, which I never even tried to understand because I always used to think it was the most boring magazine ever printed.
Today, many of the dog-eared issues are in my cellar, sitting in suitcases and cartons, or in a dark corner of my attic slowly being forgotten about over time. I am the only person now alive who knows where they are. Sometimes I take a step back in time and go up to the loft (which incidentally was built in 1860 so adds to the effect nicely), sit on an old oak beam, and tune into the past.
Sweets tended to be defined by their shapes one hundred years ago, and many products mentioned in the magazines in my attic are now all but forgotten, with product names like Marzipan Sweets, Acid Drops, Fairy Rock, Twisted Barley Sugars, Silver Comfits, and my favorite, Voice Pellets. Quite what they did for your voice, I still don’t know. Perhaps they provided the energy to shout louder for more drops.
Even the currency was better back then. Buying anything was far more engaging than it is today. The money had character and influence on your feelings; we could go into a sweetshop on the corner with a half farthing, a shilling, a crown, or guinea in our pocket. How romantic shopping for sweets used to be with words like that! Now it’s a mere mundane mechanical swipe of our debit card over a machine as both customer and seller fail to look at each other, register any appropriate human engagement, or smile.
Yes, shopping for sweets, though rewarding, is now just a monotonous beep in a supermarket as we watch them move along the conveyor belt, as we feel guilty and wonder if behind their wry smiles the checkout staff are really thinking we are just plain English Saddleback pigs. It’s nothing like walking along the beech-tree–lined country lane to the village shop with your last farthing and wondering with every step what dreams it could buy; perhaps I am far too romantic.
My mother was the editor then, and she also sold advertising space, which is a tough job, especially with a dying husband in the background. Over time my father’s illness took its hold, and with my mother’s drinking, only one magazine made it through to today—the confectionery magazine.
So, the sweets arrived in the mail and I would dig in right away and my mother would come into the lounge, before taking another secret swig of her bottle, and ask me what the sweets tasted like. I would say, “Yeah, great, Mum, sweet.” She would nod in approval, return to her desk, push her greasy glasses back to the top of her nose, and hit the keys of her self-correcting IBM Selectric golf ball typewriter. For the rest of the day, in between sleeping and sipping from a bottle wrapped in an old Budgens supermarket paper bag, she proceeded—God knows how—to write an issue of the confectionery magazine for that month.
The magazine had great authority. Oddly, my mother was a very good writer and wonderful with people. She managed to hide the drinking problem (with my help) in the beginning. Perhaps it was all that booze that gave her such a wild imagination.
Sometimes, though, I craved a conversation with a normal mum. I used to think a lot about life, and I would often sit alone on the grassy bank beside the school playground while my friends played football.
I never really found anyone to fill the gap until my mother finally married again, so for the time being I learned to reason for myself, which became a huge asset and in some ways taught me to be spiritual, as I would find myself talking to an imaginary guardian angel, something I still do to this day.
I would watch the other kids kick the ball from left to right and get upset at random moments when they didn’t have the ball and duly found myself looking for reason for my place in the world, if it wasn’t shouting about the placement of a ball. When I took a good look inside, I felt that I was just as freaky as my mother.
There was life in between my family’s nourishment of confectionery, booze, and nearer-to-death-every-day experiences. In a way, perhaps, both Mum and I were addicted and needed our regular fixes. I didn’t know any other way. There always was and always would be endless amounts of chocolate, toffees, bubble gum, and whatever I wanted, just about whenever I wanted to eat it. But free candy for a schoolkid was an eyebrow-raising thing to have on tap no matter what was happening at home.
In those days, you could eat as you wished and not be in the slightest bit concerned about what you ate. We didn’t worry about choosing fair trade, UTZ certified coffee beans, or Rainforest Alliance–approved chocolates, for example. We didn’t feel guilty if we chose our food from non-sustainable sources or from children trafficked into the trade in Western Africa. And we didn’t worry about the nutritional content. We didn’t know any better.
Our confectionery in the 1970s was packed full of artificial colors and flavors, but we didn’t mind. We quite happily got on with the important task of destroying the planet. Nowadays, we’re bombarded with new, often conflicting takes on why we should or should not eat something. But in those days, we did as we wanted and didn’t care too much that 80 percent of our confectionery contained artificial colors. (Now 85 percent doesn’t.)
For better or for worse, my childhood diet was brilliantly inappropriate. I certainly wasn’t on the receiving end of good nutritional advice. It didn’t seem to make a huge difference eating all that lot then. Despite my dreadful diet in my youth, I went on to row for England for the Under 23’s British junior team in 1986 in a coxless pair, and that was just before winning Henley Royal Regatta in a coxed four, a few years later.
Here I am today as one of the leading experts on candy and sugar consumption.
But now at least I can say I know how bad the things that I am eating are, when previously I had no idea.
My