The lady beside me in Broughty Ferry caught my eye with the same happy, glakit look I was sporting.
We had just heard the unmistakable chimes and this perfect stranger said in a dream-like state: “Was that an ice cream van?”
“I think it was,” I said – enraptured and transported back to childhood.
“I can’t remember the last time I heard one,’” she said.
“I’ve got to get my granddaughter an ice cream. She’ll love it,” before scooting off.
I pondered why those musical chimes are not as commonplace as they were in my own childhood.
I was eight when I left Charleston but vividly remember the excitement they would bring; signalling a pied piper in an ice cream van, kids for streets around forming a queue with spare coins and pocket money jangling in clenched, sweaty hands.
I was reminded of this upon reading The Courier’s story of businessman David Hamilton who is set to launch his modern twist on the traditional ice cream van, called Scooply in Fife. More on this later.
Is it purely nostalgia that makes it such a happy memory?
Ice cream vans are in the same joy-giving category of things you don’t see as often in Dundee now, along with old-fashioned sweetie shops with shelves of jars bursting with cherry lips, soor plooms and strawberry bon bons.
My local (after a move Ellengowan Drive then the Esplanade) was just off the beach, beside Sandbanks restaurant, a wonderful old-school sweetie shop.
Mind you, there were also packets of candy cigarettes pretend-smoked by four-year-olds before they were eaten – which was, well, weird.
This perhaps leads to a division of bygone things – those which had to change in the name of progress (and on occasion sanity) and those in the joy-giving category which should surely never have faded away.
In the former, ‘had to go’, I give you those sweetie smokes.
Also, old cassette tapes. I had a mobile phone cover which looked like one a few years ago and a member of my filming crew, early 20s, said: “Cool….what is it?”
As retro as an old cassette tape is and as advanced as they were at the time, the black tape would jam and unravel and be rendered useless. They were understandably replaced by CDs before the next advancement of playing almost everything from phones and other devices.
Back to the continued-bliss camp, as well as ice cream vans and sweetie shops, I happened across another this week: a Berry bus.
On country roads near Liff, I drove behind one and was again transported to a time of childhood, spending a day picking berries. It’s a vague memory – I think I only did it once or twice.
For many Dundonians, it was a rite of passage – keeping up a tradition. Buses would take you from Dundee and back, you’d pick berries in the summer holidays and be paid for the amount you turned in.
Granted, people are now given a wage to live on farms and pick berries seasonally but a farmer friend told me there’s just not a market for locals to do it – not enough would want to do it and so they employ non-locals who will.
Berry bus took me back to childhood summers
As ideas go to get our kids off screens and learn about the importance of money and graft, is it not a brilliant one?
Sure, it wasn’t all gravy* – sometimes you’d spend most of your earnings on a choc ice on the way home and your back was breaking, but some consider our surrounding fields the best in the world for berries, particularly strawberries.
The berry buses were therefore particular to our identity and shared experience, and now nostalgia, as Dundonians.
I’m not sure what this berry bus was doing – it looked like people were on a tour as they weren’t dressed for the berries. I couldn’t find an explanation online (let me know if you know more) but I’m glad at least some of the buses still exist.
Back to the new ice cream van business in Fife. David, co-owner of the Scottish Deer Centre, with a background in computing gaming, will use technology to help and have a mobile phone app to track the van, order and pay.
It’s brilliant. Just as cinemas evolved, why not ice cream vans – but run by local people and not global or national chains.
At this point in the column, it struck me that I might not be the most in-the-know about the dynamics of vans visiting neighbourhoods, given I live in the middle of fields.
So I did some research**.
In Carnoustie, an ice cream van visits on Wednesdays but at 9pm when many young ones are in bed. It also only frequents half the town, with the other half wondering why.
And in Dundee, they’re still about but much less frequently than many of our childhood days.
There should be a category when it comes to business applications to the council of ‘joy giving’ and keeping our traditions alive.
Come on, spread joy – is that not what it’s all about? Making things better and people happier?
* A traditional British phrase comparing life to meat and potatoes, while the luxuries were gravy.
** A small focus group of customers and staff at R&R barbers, Union Street, while the boys got their school hair cuts – and pals on WhatsApp.
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