Group: uk.transport · Group Profile
Author: MortimerMortimer Date: Aug 2, 2008 07:03
"John Wright" pegasus.f2s.com> wrote in message
news:rrydnQ5M-5T7_wnVnZ2dnUVZ8qDinZ2d@pipex.net...> Knight Of The Road wrote:
>> "John Wright" pegasus.f2s.com> wrote
>>>>> My mother's co-op "divi" number is still burned into my memory from days
>>> gone by.
>>
>>
>> Mmm, 343430. They used to put it on to some machine with metal sliders
>> like an arithmometer, above the till.
>
> 9624. Nothing so technological where I lived. They just used to write ours
> down in a little book, with carbon paper in it. One copy went back to my
> mother in my hot sweaty little hand, the other stayed in their book. ISTR
> she got a letter about every six months detailing how much dividend she'd
> got. The main office all these letters came from was reached by a windowed
> circular stair built in about 1935 and now somewhat of a historic
> monument.
>
> Being pre-Beeching, this was just as the Stanier 2-6-4 tank engine chuffed
> its way on to the nearest town.
I can remember walking down with my mum to the parade of shops on the main
road: there was a chippie with a huge circular window surrounded by black
glossy tiles (Art Deco - it's now a listed building) and a grocer's called
Nathan Bake which had one of those maroon bacon slicers that would probably
cause Health & Safety to have kittens. Opposite was the poky little chemists
shop that had once been owned by my great uncle.
In the opposite direction, about 200 yards away from out house, there was a
parade of shops set at 45 degrees across one side of a cross roads: there
was - hairdresser, newsagent (where I made my very first purchase using
decimal coins - a comic or a Rocket ice-lolly, probably), grocer,
greengrocer (who was colourblind and was convicted of selling green tomatoes
thinking they were ripe), off-licence. Gradually these shops closed down. I
think the off-licence expanded into a couple of the neighbouring shops and
then itself closed down a few year later. Now most of the shop fronts have
been replaced by a blank concrete wall with a few small windows in it - they
have probably become more flats, like the ones that had always been on the
storeys above them.
| 
