Open Writing

Shops Have Mysteries

It was a bit of a mystery. The little shop over the railway bridge and round the corner was called Pacey's. If we needed a breadloaf, I was sent to buy one. Breadloaf, a funny old fashioned word but that's the way we said it. I'm talking about 60 years ago. I was fascinated by the machine Mr Pacey used to slice bacon. What a wonderful, whirring, whining thing it was. But the mystery? Well, it started when I turned up one day and there were different people behind the little counter.

They were still there, the next time I went in. The shop was still called Pacey's but where were Mr and Mrs Pacey? Being a child with an enquiring mind, I asked. The nice man said that his name was Pacey, too, and that satisfied me for the time being.

Pacey's was just 100 yards or so from home. Our grocer was Mr Searby, and his shop was about a mile away, nearer to Newark. Behind the counter were floor-to-ceiling shelves of most ingredients my mother needed for cooking. Flour and sugar were provided in plain paper bags. Many items were picked out or sliced and weighed before being put into paper bags. Brown, white and dark blue paper bags. This was long before plastic bags appeared.

We had to walk a mile in the other direction, to Old Balderton, to buy our meat. Unlike Pacey's and Searby's, the butcher's shop wasn't on a corner. It was next door to the Linconshire Road Car Company depot, the bus repair garage. In the eyes of this small boy, Mr Evans the butcher was an impressive man — rotund, red-faced, and wielding all manner of weapons as he went about his business. Whole carcases hung from hooks on the ceiling. Sawdust was spread daily over the floor. The general aroma was unusual but not unpleasant.

Our milk was delivered to the back door by Mr Rowe, who was a distant relation by marriage. His pony obligingly waited while he took a churn from his elegantly decorated trap. With his ladle, which I assume must have been of one pint capacity, he poured our milk into the basins or jugs my mother had ready. While doing this, he confided in Ma an exciting tit-bit of gossip about someone or other in the village. It was told with lowered voice, for her ears only, not to be repeated. Later in the day, Ma would compare notes with our jovial neighbour Mrs Raymond, who had listened to the same not-to-be-repeated tale, of course.

Then there was Mr Lunn. He didn't have a shop that I knew of, but he would occasionally park his van outside our house, throw open the side, and reveal an exciting and aromatic display of polishes, mops, floor brushes, scrubbing brushes, washing power, soap, string, the lot. Oh, the mix of smells was wonderful! Mind you, my mother was very suspicious of detergent when it first came onto the market after the War. She declared that dirt was added to it during manufacture so that the water in the copper and dolly-tub looked much greyer when she'd finished the laundry.

All that was 60 or more years ago. The corner shops have probably gone now. Milk and carbolic soap are no longer brought to the door by horse and trap or by a 1930s motor-van. However, when I arrived in Melbourne (Australia) nearly 40 years ago, there were still lots of corner shops and I could hear the clop-clop-rumble of the milkman's horse and cart along our street at five o'clock in the morning. The milkman changed jobs long ago and still lives, now an old man, a few doors away. His grown-up children have their own grown-up children. And nearly all the corner shops have gone.

Why have they gone? We'll ponder that mystery in the next article.

© Copyright Brian Barratt 2008