Shops

Ghost Town

~ beetleypete ~ 50 Comments

I am just back from a trip to my nearest large town, Dereham. This market town is the fifth largest in Norfolk, with a poulation of around 14,000. I was heading for the big Tesco Supermarket on the outskirts, to get a weekly shop. With most other town shops closed, the place felt deserted. School closures meant that the late afternoon school run traffic was nonexistent, and with the exception of the few town centre shops selling food, every other shop was closed up, and in some cases, shuttered.

Compared to a normal Monday afternoon, it felt like driving around in a ghost town.

Once at the supermarket, new restrictions are in place. A large section of the car park is closed off by barriers, enforcing a strict one-way queueing system to get into the shop. One customer only at a time, one trolley, and one total transaction. Inside, it feels strange. Not only were there few customers, perhaps a quarter of what I would usually see at this time, but the aisles were closed off at each end, enforcing another one-way system for shoppers.

Most things were available, with the exception of dried pasta. (I buy fresh anyway, and they had that) There was only one type of eggs available, an expensive blue-shell variety. Medicines like Paracetamol and Antihistamine were not in stock, but there was plenty of bread, meat, vegetables, and fresh fruit. There were also toilet rolls, and paper kitchen towels, as well as anti-bacterial sprays, and most cleaning products.

Sadly, I sensed an element of profiteering in the prices. Whether the supermarkets are having to pay more to secure the goods, or they are trying to make up for the lack of sales now panic buying has slowed, I don’t know. But there were almost no ‘special offers’, and a four pack of toilet rolls, costing £2 only two weeks ago was now £3. That’s a huge percentage increase, in a product people are still trying to buy. Fortunately, I didn’t need any, and they were restricted to one pack per customer.

On the way home, during what passes for the ‘rush hour’ around here, there was less traffic than early on a Sunday morning.

Perhaps people are finally ‘getting it’? I hope so.

Thinking Aloud On a Sunday

~ beetleypete ~ 73 Comments

Sundays.

What better to think about on a Sunday, than Sundays?
When I got up this morning, I had forgotten it was a Sunday.

At one time in my life, Sundays were a big deal. Getting up late, reading comics, my parents relaxed after a long week at work. My Dad would get ready to go to the pub for midday, while Mum started preparing everything for the big meal we would eat around 2:30 when he got back. After eating, they usually went for a ‘lie down’ in the bedroom, leaving me to my books or toys.

It was a long time before I worked out what that Sunday ‘lie down’ was all about.

By 5:30, Mum would have prepared a meal called ‘Sunday tea’. In London, this usually consisted of assorted fresh seafood, bread and butter, and slices of a cake she would have baked earlier. Fortified with this, my Dad would leave again, to get to the pub by seven when it opened. This left Mum and me watching television together, until Dad got home around midnight. It never occurred to me that he was drinking and driving. Back then, everyone did that.

By the time I was married, the Sunday tradition had altered for us, but not much. Reading huge Sunday papers in bed, followed by a bacon sandwich and more coffee downstairs. As there were no shops open in those days, we would usually visit my Mum in the late afternoon. She was on her own by then, and still preparing the big traditional dinner, followed by cake. If we stayed home, we ate later, and had anything we fancied, not always the British Sunday Roast. With work the next morning, there was rarely anything done late at night, so we were usually back in bed by eleven.

To be honest, I found Sundays really boring.

Once I started to work shifts as an EMT, I had to work at least two Sundays a month, sometimes three. That completely shattered any notion of a traditional Sunday in my life, and it soon felt like just another day.

When I retired in 2012, I discovered that Sundays here in Beetley were seemingly frozen in time. People mowed their lawns on Sundays, washed their cars, carried out some DIY tasks, and mostly still ate that traditional Sunday lunch around two in the afternoon. By then, shops were open from ten until four, so younger people might go into Norwich or Dereham to look around the shops, or to buy some food from the supermarket. Traffic here on a Sunday can be worse than during the working week.

In less than a year, Sundays lost their rediscovered novelty for me. When you don’t have to go to work on a Monday, or rush to get home from work on a Friday, the weekend starts to feel like any other day. Ollie has to go out for his walk, and I can prepare anything we want for dinner, eating at around the usual time for us of seven in the evening.

Other people do different things of course. Religious people still attend church, though in fewer numbers than in the past. Those with small children might take them to the park, or drive them to a regular activity, like a football club, or dance class. In better weather, many flock to the coast, enjoying the beaches and activities in the sea. It is only thirty minutes away by car, but you have to get there early to find a space in the car park.

Once winter arrives, few people venture out. They stay in in front of the fire, or the warmth of central heating. The huge choice of entertainment provided by television, phones, and computers these days means they are not bored, as I used to be in my teens. For them, it is school tomorrow, or work. That ‘Monday Morning’ feeling as the day draws to a close.

But for me, Monday is just another day, as is today.

These days, I have to be reminded it is a Sunday.

The Noodle Dream

~ beetleypete ~ 60 Comments

I was reading a post about dreams on Maggie’s blog the other day.

SoCS – Dream a Little Dream

That was a coincidence, as I had woken up from a vivid dream that morning. It is not unusual for me to have dreams, and for those dreams to often be unusual in themselves. But on this occasion, I could find no explanation whatsoever.

The Noodle Dream.

I was living here in Norfolk, and I was the same age. I wanted to buy some noodles to add to a Chinese meal I was planning to cook that night. I wanted fresh ones for preference, but dried would do. I set off in the car, and headed for Tesco, the largest supermarket in the nearby town of Dereham. I know it well, so went straight to the area where they sell Chinese, Indian, and other foreign food products. Not only were there no noodles displayed, there was no empty space where they should have been.

I managed to find a member of staff wandering past, and asked her if they had any noodles in the store-room. She looked at me quizzically, and repeated “Noodles?” I nodded. “Sorry, never heard of anything like that”. Was her reply. I left that shop and walked across to another supermarket situated on the same shopping complex. The same thing happened in there, with a young man shouting across to his supervisor, “This customer wants noodles, do you know what they are?” She shook her head.

There are three other supermarkets in Dereham, so I drove to them all, with the same events played out in each one. Becoming exasperated, I drove out of the town to two villages where I knew I would find smaller grocery stores. One of them is run by an Indian lady. She shook her head at my request for noodles. “What are they like?” She asked me. “Spaghetti”, was my suggestion. “Oh we have that, it is with the rice and cooking sauces”. In the second, much smaller shop, I not only confounded the person serving at the counter, but she got a group of other customers involved too. “This man wants to buy noodles. Does anyone know what he’s talking about?” They shook their heads in turn.

By now, it was getting dark, and my only other shopping options were over twelve miles away, in Swaffham.

So I returned home, with no noodles.

If anyone thinks they know what that was about, I would love to hear it.

Going Shopping: The Victorian Experience

~ beetleypete ~ 81 Comments

Some of you will recall that I recently posted a photo-series about the sort of shops that were around when I was very young. Some more research shows that around one hundred years earlier, during the Victorian Era, many of those same shops were already trading. It seems very little had changed between 1860, and 1958.

Sainsbury is one of the largest supermarket chains in Britain. British readers will know the name well, as there is hardly a town or city in the UK that does not have a branch nearby.

This is how they started out.

Much in the same way as so many Victorians liked to be photographed standing outside their beloved houses, the same applied to the shopkeepers of the time.

Long before local authorities banned excessive on-street displays for ‘health and safety’ concerns, it was usual for many goods to be stacked outside the shops. There was rarely enough room for everything inside, and all that stock had to be laboriously carried back in at closing time.

There were always lots of small shops selling household essentials.
This would have been the ‘Homebase’ of its time

An ‘Off-Licence’ (or License) is a shop that sells beers, wines, and spirits that have to be consumed ‘Off’ the premises. Unlike pubs, it was forbidden to open any bottles inside, or to drink them in there. Customers could take in their own pots and jugs though, to be filled from barrels of beer inside.
They continued until the supermarkets began to sell alcohol, and drove them out of business.
I actually operated one, with my mother, from 1976-1981.
Not this one though.
(The sign ‘Free House’ doesn’t mean that the drinks were free of charge. It means that the shop is not tied to one particular brewery, so ‘Free’ to sell all brands)

Sweets and chocolate were always very popular. Dedicated ‘sweet shops’ could be found everywhere, usually with small children inside, trying to decide which sweets to spend a very small amount of money on. They almost always sold cigarettes and tobacco too, and you can see that stated in small print over the entrance door.

Tobacconists usually sold newspapers and magazines too, as well as offering some sweets or confectionery to tempt customers.

At the same time in America, shops were getting grander and grander. This is a Philadelphia drug store, in 1880.
The interior is magnificent.

After trudging around doing all that shopping, the Victorian consumer usually liked to stop off for a cup of tea, and perhaps a bite to eat.
Popular ‘Tea Rooms’ offered genteel surroundings, and fair prices.
You would be served by very smart waitresses too.
Still prefer Starbucks?

I think it is a great shame that these character-filled small shops with their dedicated and knowledgeable owners have all but disappeared.

Like many good things of the past, they have been consigned to History.

London: The Shops Of My Youth

~ beetleypete ~ 41 Comments

Shopping in London in the 1950s was very different to the experience today. Most districts had shopping streets, or markets. Each shop would usually sell one specific item, such as meat in a butchers, or toys in a toy shop. There were no shopping malls, and the biggest department stores were considered to be too expensive for most working-class people.

Here is a selection of photos that show what shopping was like in my childhood.

Toys.
This could easily have been me, gazing longingly at the toys on display.

Alcohol.
Outside of pubs, some shops were licensed to sell alcohol to be consumed off the premises only. They were known as ‘Off-Licences’.

Fruit and Vegetables.
Usually referred to as ‘Greengrocers’, shops just like this one could be found in any London district.

Pie and Mash.
Meat pies served with mashed potatoes, and Eels sold stewed, or jellied.
This was a staple food of working-class people in many districts, and you could either eat inside, or take the food home.

Televisions.
In my childhood, TV sets had tiny screens, and were notoriously unreliable in operation.
Yet they were so expensive, it was not unusual for just one house in a street to own one, and everyone else pop in to watch it.

Records.
With the boom in pop music just starting, record shops like this one were springing up all over.
They also sold the equipment to play the records on.

Department Store.
Outside of the more exclusive big stores in the West End, local department stores served other areas.
This was Jones and Higgins in Peckham, the nearest department store to where we lived.

A trip into Town

~ beetleypete ~ 17 Comments

Another reblog for new followers, from 2014. One day in the life of a sleepy Norfolk market town.

beetleypete

This morning, I had to make a trip into Dereham, the local town. I often drive through it, to get to the large supermarket on the outskirts, but I rarely have occasion to stop there. Today, I had to take a suit to the Dry Cleaners, as I will wear it next week, to a friend’s funeral. I was also going to pop into the branch of my bank there, and perhaps have a look around some shops.

I parked in the large free car park at the northern end of the High Street. As it is not one of the market days, it was easy to find a space. It was very cold in the wind, and occasional sleet made the short walk unpleasant. The shop where I left the dry cleaning is also a shoe repair and key-cutting business. The pleasant young man who runs it is always…

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Selling Yourself: Part One

~ beetleypete ~ 48 Comments

From the time I left school, until I joined the London Ambulance Service, was a period of less than twelve years. During that time, I had an unusually high number of jobs, all but one of which involved selling, in one form, or another. I have written about some of those jobs before, but I have recently reflected on just how easy it was to get work, to come and go as you pleased, sometimes starting and leaving three jobs in the same year. In today’s world, of high unemployment, no-hours contracts, reduced Trade Union rights, and a return to the Victorian era. with no paid holidays, or sick leave, it makes me realise just how easy it was, to live in the 1960’s and 1970’s, compared to the present day. My own employment history, before settling down in the Ambulance Service, may seem like a poor CV. In those days, it was very much a way of life for many of us.

I will probably write in more detail about some of these job choices at a later date. For now, this is something of a list, and a story about Selling. My Dad was a salesman, from 1959, until the late 1970’s. He passed on his advice to me in one phrase, something I later discovered was not his own pearl of wisdom at all, just another old salesman’s maxim. He told me; ‘Don’t try to sell the product. Sell yourself, your personality, and the rest will follow naturally.’ I took him at his word, and spent many years of my life trying to do just that. Sell myself.

After a brief non-selling job, taken as I waited to pass my driving test, I was soon off the mark. Selling cheap records in various locations around the South Coast. Or rather, not really selling them at all, as all I actually did was to ‘merchandise’ them, by checking the previous sales, and filling up the rack to the requisite number, then invoice the outlet accordingly. This was done from a transit van, inside which I also kept all the stock, occasionally making the long trip to the West London depot, to fill it up again. Luckily for me, the company decided to go ‘up market’ shortly after I joined. They replaced the vans with new Vauxhall Vivas, and we did the ordering in the same way, with the goods delivered later, by bulk drops. I loved having my new company car, which in those days carried no tax burden, and with careful accounting, could also provide me with sufficient fuel to use the car privately. I also got to see a lot of the South Coast of England, albeit mostly in bad weather. I wanted more contact with modern records though, and soon tired of selling rehashes of chart hits, and back-catalogue cheapies. So, I moved on.

Through another of my Dad’s contacts, I got a job in a Central London record shop, a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus. This was not my first foray into retail, as I had previously had a Saturday job, in the record department of a large store in Croydon. This was hardly comparable to my experiences in the West End though. I arrived at the shop, to find that I was to be the third man, to the existing pair that ran it. One was a likeable, smartly-dressed Jazz musician, who was only working there between gigs, to pay his bills. The other was a bearded hippy-type, overweight, and a heavy smoker. On paper, he ran the shop, in as much as he did the ordering, and banked the takings. In reality, he did little else, as he had numerous sidelines, that he used the shop as a base to pursue. The shop stayed open late, and traded at weekends, including Sundays, decades before Sunday trading was usual. The opening times were ‘flexible’, and dependent on when they turned up, not closing until they were fed up. Late starts, and later closing suited me well enough, even though I had no formal hours in my agreement, I was assured that I would get ‘extras’ to make up for the longer working week.  We played music of our choice all day, and took breaks whenever we wanted. I decided that I would like it there.

The life of the shops around this part of London; Leicester Square, Coventry Street, and Piccadilly Circus, was not your typical shopkeeping. Souvenir shops were plentiful, and kiosks selling drinks and cigarettes overcharged alarmingly, though not to fellow shop staff. When customers asked to pay in foreign currency, we would take it at a rate derisory for them, change it up later, and pocket the difference. I was allowed, within reason, to keep any records that I liked, and if any of our friends came in, they would be substantially undercharged for goods. If we wanted something from a nearby shop, like food, cigarettes, or cold drinks, we would tell those assistants to come and see us later, and give them records, or sell them some at laughably cheap prices. It felt good, it felt like a family. We were not unduly concerned about the profits of the chain of shops we worked for. Regular sales were through the roof, and our weekly take was phenomenal. This was the heyday of record-buying, and we sold everything we could get. New releases were in such demand, that customers queued outside before we opened, much as they do now, for the latest Harry Potter book. We offered no discounts at all, in fact we often acted as if we were doing them a favour, by actually taking their money, at full retail price.

It was soon obvious to me, that some creaming off was going on. The manager could often be seen stuffing wads of cash into his pockets, just before leaving for the day. I was told that I could drive in by car, and that it was alright to take the change from petty cash to feed the parking meter, as I could then give him a lift home to North London. It says something of the differences then, that I felt confident in driving to Leicester Square, easily finding a space on a meter, then feeding it until the cut off period, in those days 6.30pm, on a daily basis. I wouldn’t want to try that now. Once taken into trust, I was made aware of much more goings-on. Our musician was an alcoholic, and I could always smell drink on him. I soon noticed his regular runs to the booze shop,  a carrier bag full of records in hand, no doubt to exchange for drink. I was also allowed to go down to the cellar more often. This was supposed to be where we kept the extra supplies of top-selling discs, but was much more besides. At weekends, a steady stream of ‘special’ customers would arrive, and ask for the manager by name. I was told to allow them access to the cellar, where he kept a notional ‘office’. They were usually respectable-looking, well-dressed men, who were around middle age, rarely younger than 50. I had always presumed that they were involved in some kind of fiddle, involving currency, or rare records, something the manager also traded in, through his contacts in the shop. One Sunday morning, I found out the real reason for the visitors.

With just two of us in, our musician having played a late gig, and crying off sick, the manager told me not to open straight away. He took me down to the cellar, where I was startled to find a projector set up, and four or five assorted chairs placed in front of it. He told me that we would have some early arrivals, and that once they were all there, I was not to go down to get anything. He started the projector, and showed me a snippet of what they were calling on us to see. It was a reel-to-reel film, involving pornography, but not of a kind I had ever seen, or even heard about. Without going into offensive detail, it included scenes of young (apparently German) women, going about their most intimate toilet functions, as men lay underneath them. The second film, I was told, was to involve the participation of a Doberman dog, a farmyard pig, and assorted horses. I took him on his word, and looked upon our ‘visitors’ in a very different light, as each arrived, and sheepishly made his way downstairs, to the necessarily silent film show. As I later found out, the film mornings were free of charge. It was selling copies for them to take away, that made the big money. In the heart of London, yards from the notorious Soho strip joints and clubs, I saw first hand the real seediness, that lay behind the bright lights, and gaudy neon signs. It did occur to me that it was blatantly illegal, but for some reason, it didn’t really bother me in the least.

Eventually, the bubble burst, but not as I had anticipated it would. My all-too short venture into the exciting world of Central London retail, came to an abrupt end, when I was called over to Covent Garden one day, to see the Area Manager. It is so long ago now, but I think that I expected something good, perhaps promotion to another shop, or maybe a bonus. At the very least, I pondered, it will be a pat on the back, for a job well-done, and hours worked beyond the call of duty. When I was put in front of the Area Manager, he immediately bombarded me with questions about till shortages, sales of ‘unofficial’ items, and frequent staff absences. I shrugged to all of this, and launched into a form of defence; after all, I am only the new boy, what would I know? He offered to spare me further investigations, if I would just tell all about my colleagues, and confirm his fears of various scams. I kept quiet. Where I was from, you didn’t grass. If I thought silence would spare me, I was sadly wrong. I was dismissed there and then, wages up to date, cards in hand, even my personal stuff, already collected from the shop. Indignantly, I departed, fuming inside. I was only a small part of a well-organised machine in this tiny shop, yet I was the one being expected to fall on my sword. I tried to contact my former colleagues, but they would not let me into the premises, and refused to talk to me on the ‘phone. I had been offered up, in a carefully arranged set-up, designed to save their jobs. Lesson learned.

As was usual then, I soon bounced back. Through another contact, I quickly got another job, this time as manager of a small record shop in East London.  You might think that this would have been difficult, given the hasty departure from one of the few jobs that I was ever sacked from, and the absence of any positive reference. Not so. They knew ‘the game’, and they expected me to learn from my mistakes. As manager, I would be poacher turned gamekeeper, and expected to be on top of any strokes pulled by my two female staff. The contact recommended me to the owner, who was a then famous TV personality, and a leading radio DJ. Although he is long dead, I will not name him, as identification might lead others to conclusions that would be in error. This owner took me on face value, and I started the next week. This next episode in record retail was to be markedly different from the one that preceded it. The new shop was on one of the main roads of East London, and not too far from a well-used street market. Like many shops in the area, it took the biggest percentage of its takings on a Friday and Saturday, and weekdays were famously quiet. My brief was to try to change this, and to hopefully generate a steadier sales pattern, that could justify the employment of three staff all week.

Easier said than done. Shopping trends in those areas were firmly entrenched, and I had my work cut out. I tried what I knew, and hoped that West End methods could make the short journey across London to the East. Window displays were my first brainwave. The ones that I inherited were lame, at best, consisting of little more than piles of record covers draped around some material in the windows. I went all-out, with new display materials, and dedicated one window to a specific new release each week. arranging the covers of that record as imaginatively as I could. My staff consisted of two girls, one slightly older that me, the other the same age. They were fairly disinterested, but happy that I was of a similar age, as the previous manager had been in his 60’s. They spent a lot of time chatting to their friends, who would just hang around, and never buy records. I approached local venues, and offered to promote new bands, and to display posters at the back of the shop. I also introduced headphones, so that prospective customers could listen to records, without everyone else having to hear them. I even arranged for the famous DJ owner to make a personal appearance, and to play some records, in his inimitable style. It was all useless. We were taking 75% of our weekly takings on a  Friday and Saturday, even after my efforts. It was hardly worth opening the rest of the week, let alone staying open for the half-day closing, when all the surrounding shops were closed after lunch.  The travelling was also getting me down, as I had to drive through the Blackwall Tunnel, morning and evening, to get to and from Kent. This is a notorious traffic black-spot, and it was taking me well over an hour each way, sometimes two, to make the journey. Then there were the customers. Nobody was interested in unusual Soul records, as I was, or even the big progressive rock bands of the day. They liked traditional stuff, or rock and roll, and even the stomach-churning Country and Western. Save for a few big number one singles, even the stock was boring me to tears. I resigned, and recommended the older assistant for my job.

I hadn’t lasted long, but I already had my eye on something new.