Lemonade days...

Coke (it’s the real thing), Corona (the lemonade not the beer), R. Whites (I’m a secret lemonade drinker), Pepsi (come alive), Kia-Ora (your projectionist tonight is Eric), Lemon-o-Lime (in that funny bright green bottle), Fanta (which was invented by the Nazis), Irn bru (Bru'd in Scotland from girders), Vimto (purple and fizzy), Cresta (It’s frothy man – frothy but disgusting) and my favourite…Tizer. Oh yes, Tizer the Appetizer! So red, so bubbly, so acidic and sweet, and so full of sugar it made you leap around the lounge like a chicken – how I loved it.

I remember when fizzy drinks were a real treat. Most times all we got to drink at home was tap water or tea (coffee had not yet been invented in our house). Squash, either Robinson’s or of any of the other cheaper varieties, was far too expensive to drink on any day that wasn’t so hot that the tarmac on the road melted and stuck to the bottoms of my sandals – and ice! Well, let’s just say that ice was viewed as a luxury item.

Lemonade days were special days indeed, but Tizer was extra-special. Even the bottle screamed X-S with its black rubber flip-top, red rubber seal, and the label - oh the label, an orange and an apple in perfect harmony. I remember the excitement of the curled wire lock pressed tight against my thumb and the POP of the white capped flip-top as it flew open – Tizzzerrrsss! - and always best ice cold from my auntie Kate’s old Belle-Air Fridge… glug, glug, glug, ahhhh!

These days, fizzy drinks are an everyday affair. Cans and plastic bottles have replaced the returnable glass of my childhood, and caffeine energy drinks have ousted the Tizer and Vimto that I swigged in the warm Thame park sunshine of my boyhood. Back then, when Manchester’s Fred Pickup launched Tizer in 1924, 'Pickup's Appetizer' was all the rage, and after Fred’s death the recipe passed to the Armour Trust before being sold in 1972 to A.G. Barr (the makers of Irn-Bru) for £2.5 million. I remember the Armour Trust recipe – it was redder, fizzier, sharper and better than Barr’s imitation ever was - despite the £2.5 million price tag that Barr paid for it.

These days fizzy drinks just don’t seem to have the same fizz, they’ve become dull and flat – it’s not the real thing, it isn’t an appetizer; you can’t say it’s made from girders any longer and its not even frothy man. I’d almost stopped being a secret lemonade drinker - but just recently I discovered a fizzy drink that takes me back to childhood, one that seems to taste as good as those fizzy drinks back in those times when a fizzy drink was a rare treat.

In 2008 Pepsi UK launched a fizzy drink which they call a ‘Sparkling Cola Drink with Natural Plant Extracts’ and it really hits the spot. They’ve dropped the corn fructose and returned to lots of sugar as a main ingredient, along with apple extract, caramel, coffee leaf, grape tartaric acid, real gum arabic from real acacia trees, cane sugar and sparkling spring water. It’s great. Pepsi RAW is just like drinks used to be; full of sugar and sweet. So full of sugar it almost gets me leaping around the lounge like a chicken.

If only I had my auntie Kate’s Belle-Air Fridge.