Memories of Langdale Road shops (3)

Posted by Kingsley Road Kid on September 23, 2008 1:45 PM

This story concerns a very embarrassing errand I was sent on when I was ten years old. You couldn't have picked a worse thing to send a young boy for a yard of knicker elastic. My dad had given me a small piece of paper with the words written in blue biro.

Audrey's wool shop in Langdale Road was at the time an all female domain.
Full of little wooden draws with glass fronts, that held multi coloured wool and sewing thread, knitting patterns and knitting needles.
As I opened the door there was a hushed silence and all the middle aged women turned round to look at me. They were surprised to see a young boy in the shop. The female assistant took the note off me; I was blushing bright red by this time. I breathed a sigh of relief when she walked off to the back of the shop, I could feel a shop full of eyes burning into me. They were all keen to know what I had been sent for.

The female assistant came back smiling and said in a big loud voice "How wide does your mum want her knicker elastic? "An inch or three quarters of an inch?" I replied "an inch" guessing. All the middle-aged women's heads swivelled like chickens in my direction. At that moment I wished the ground could have swallowed me up. I dashed all the way home.

• Post or read comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit

Memories of Langdale Road Shops 2

Posted by Kingsley Road Kid on September 14, 2008 2:25 PM

Memories of Langdale Road (2)

One of the other shops I remember from childhood stood in Langdale Road and was called Stubbs's it was a little walk around store that sold almost everything from firelighters to bacon.
Mr Stubbs's used to allow us tick until the end of the week when the family were able to pay it off, most of the time!

For a few pennies I ran errands for one of the many old ladies in Kingsley Road called Mrs. Rutter. It was always the same shopping list, a quarter of Spam, two ounces of cheese and a small brown loaf.
The shop assistant at Stubbs's knew the list so well that she asked if it was for Mrs Rutter, and if it was she would add on extra piece of Spam or bit of extra cheese.
Mind you the same assistant could be very stern, when I ran all the way there for a bar of the hard green washing soap for my mother to wash nappies and was a halfpenny short, I was soon sent to get the allusive halfpenny.
On saying that small businesses were quite generous in those days, and always gave you good service to keep your custom.

The butcher at the time was called Glover's. It was a traditional butchers with sawdust on its floor, it was a good butcher's.
Very rarely could we afford the stewing steak but when we did it made a wonderful stew.
Most of the time in those days, being from a poor family, we called in Glover's for a bone for the dog!
This we would take home and boil to make a thin stew, only then did we give the bone to the dog.
I had the feeling Mr Glover knew my poor family circumstances, because he never charged us even if there was meat on the bones.
These little acts of kindness helped us survive through the most difficult of times.

• Post or read comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Keywords:
• Kingsley Road
• Langdale Road
• Runcorn

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit