What? No Topics?

I was saddened earlier this year to hear of the demise of the Topic bar. I was rather a fan. 

Who doesn't remember the advertising jingle? 

'What's got a hazelnut in every bite?' 

And the inevitable puerile reply involving squirrels, of course.

   

Apparently they just weren't selling enough to warrant continuing the brand. 

Don't people like hazelnuts anymore? 

Or maybe there's a shortage. 

Certainly, there are very few left on my local hazel trees - the squirrels, jays, woodpeckers and dormice have been very busy. The ground is littered with shells.

I wrote quite a bit about hazels in earlier posts (here and here). There are an awful lot of them growing around here. 

Which is why the village is called Hazlemere - a corruption of 'Hazel Moor' as this used to be a big triangle of open land between High Wycombe, Beaconsfield and Amersham. 

There was also a kind of zoo here at one time and a lion escaped from it.

But that's a story for another time ...