Popular culture is littered with stories of two people overcoming the class divide in order to carve out a future together. Whether it’s uptown girls living in white bread worlds, Richard Gere romancing his pretty woman or rich kid Andrew McCarthy falling for pretty in pink Molly Ringwald, we are consistently told that love can bridge all boundaries.
Which is a pile of crap of course. We all know that Duckie should have got the girl, Julia Roberts would have given Gere syphilis, and putty faced Billy Joel would never have attracted his model wife Christie Brinkley without his millions.
It’s not just in the world of romance where the distinction between the wrong and the right side of the tracks can cause division. Huddersfield has two different ice cream shops of note: Dixon’s and Longley Farm. Both manufacture their own product, both claim to use only natural ingredients, and both have had a strong presence in the area for over twenty years. But that’s where the similarities end.
Longley Farm is situated in Holmfirth, an area so white and middle class that even the drunks stick out their little finger when taking a swig from their bottles. Dixon’s on the other hand is in Lockwood, a socially deprived inner city area with a high population of people of Pakistani decent. Both stores are always teeming with customers; Longley Farm full of ladies who lunch and yummy mummies, and Dixon’s with Asian elders on the way back from mosque and snotty nosed street urchins.
Longley Farm are perhaps best known for making yogurts and cottage cheese, their ice cream is a sideline sold only at their factory shop. Dixon’s on the other hand only make ice cream. Longley Farm has a wide and varied range of different flavors, from the mundane (mint choc chip), through the exotic (mango), to the just plain weird (stem ginger). Dixon’s make vanilla ice cream, and that’s it. They pore scorn on the high falutin pistachio, raspberry ripple, and rum and raisin. Even chocolate and strawberry is considered a little uppity. No, vanilla is what they’ve got and so it’s what you’ll get, with a Cadbury’s flake stuck in it if you’re lucky.
And because they both make such great ice cream I’d be hard pressed to choose a favorite. The range of choice at Longley is countered by the extremely reasonable prices at Dixon’s. In the end though I’d probably have to come down on the side of the latter purely because it was their fleet of ice cream vans that served the streets of my youth. The taste of Dixon’s ice cream awakens old echos of jangly ice cream van chimes, hurrying down the cobbled roads of Cliff Road, a shiny coin clutched in one sweaty fist and my parent’s hand in the other.
on Sep 20th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
We all know Dixon’s ice cream is hands down the best in the world. Bizarrely though, you can’t freeze it, which seems to defy the point of ice cream a little…
on Sep 21st, 2007 at 12:50 am
Vanilla? That’s all they make? I’m sure it’s fantastic, but my god, man, where’s the excitement?
on Sep 21st, 2007 at 5:36 am
Seems Amy has inherited your childhood attachment for ice cream from a van, which unfortunately for our waistlines, has extended to us. It is the first time we have ever lived anywhere where there is a regular van delivery. Luckily Grandad always has his “fast trainers” on to get our there before the van departs.
on Sep 21st, 2007 at 8:44 am
’tis the same in the tiny north east pit village from whence my wife hails - Riggy’s Cafe sells their home made ice cream just like they have done since the Italien Mr Riggy made the place his home after being released from a POW camp - it too is only vanilla and it too is gorgeous, so much so that the cafe bit of the cafe does no business whatsoever and the maidens who work there spend all their time scooping ice cream from the depths of their huge freezer.
There is also the tale of the two daughters of Riggy who fought over the secret recipe when he died, and then split the business in half, but thats for another day.
on Sep 21st, 2007 at 9:38 am
Damn you Dan and Amy, my reading of your ice cream and sugar focused blog yesterday lead to an irrestible desire to have some ice cream last night. Sadly we don’t live near enough to any ice cream makers to have freshly made stuff so I had to make do with Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked concoction.
It was delicious though and made the watching of a Steven Seagal film all the more bearable.
on Sep 21st, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Longley farm is definitely the best - mint choc chip…mmmmm…it is now a christmas tradition for us hughes’s! Poor Sam - he wont get any!!
on Sep 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 am
Damn you all to hell. Now I’m going to have to eat some ice cream tonight. And I was doing so well all week. I ain’t cucumbers, carrots, and celery for lunch today! Do you hear me?!
This post should have had some sort of dietary warning.
on Sep 22nd, 2007 at 12:26 am
I meant that I “ate” not “ain’t” - cause ain’t ain’t a word. Ya know?