half loaf

Sawdust on the floor of butchers.

A half loaf in my neck of the woods in Scotland was a full loaf of bread, sliced or unsliced. I have no idea why it was given the title of half loaf.

Butter, which was in barrels.
The shop assistant putting the cash into cylinder thingy, then it got whizzed over head on wires to the cashier

Watching the butter being cut from the slab and patted into shape with wooden paddles then wrapped in greaseproof.

Biscuits in open large tins - you could get the broken ones cheap!

Home and Colonial shop where, it seemed, that everything was weighed out for you into a thick mauve paper bag. There were glass topped boxes everywhere with biscuits, sugar and large stabs of cake and you bought how much you wanted. The bacon was sliced as asked in right thickness and number. Wonderful.

I remember the loose biscuits in tins and the broken ones. The shop near us used to sell crisps this way too. We were always hopeful that they had just opened a tin when we went to buy ours so they would be more crunchy. Also bacon slicers. We felt so exotic having Camp coffee for the first time.
The bread man used to call at our house with his basket of goodies.

Think we posted about bacon slicers at the same time Brenda!

In the early 50's I remember walking up and down in the corner shop deciding what to spend my penny on, the choice was agonising for me I could have 4 sweeties for a penny, a penny bag of broken crisps with the screw of blue paper with the salt in it. Sherbet dabs, liquorice pipes, shoe laces,
sweets were sold by the ounce out of jars weighed and put into a paper bag. and of course you could just spend a halfpenny and two farthings made a halfpenny so I often had 2 sweeties and a liquorice pipe. To be given a threepenny bit to spend was just bliss a whole 3 weeks pocket money.

Like KatyK Camp and Bev coffee were exotic, carbolic soap, Isall and Bronko toilet paper, the copper on to boil the clothes, the mangle and the old tin bath before the fire.... see you've started me off now I'm thinking of spangles, jubblies the first time I got milk out of a machine in a wax carton, look I'm going to stop before I take up the whole page.

Withany. Oo yes jubblies, orange ones that left a mark on either side of your face when you sucked them, because they were so big. My DGD bought a jubbly recently, they are tiny now (or is that just because I'm bigger) And milk chews, fruit salad, black jacks, gobstoppers, liquorice root, and when we came out of the Saturday morning matinee, bags of broken crisps for a penny. I think this should be on the memories thread !

No calculators,in the 60s shop assistants had to add the shopping mentally or add up on a piece of paper, in old money as well,before decimalisation

Jubblies, Waggon Wheels and Gobstoppers were all much larger than they now are. Penny sweets were in fact 4 for a penny (a farthing each) and of course old pennies at that, 240 to the pound sterling. Decimalisation has certainly decimated value however saying that my grandad needed around 13 weeks wages to buy a bycicle, today one would probably need 1 weeks wages.
As for the calculators for shop assistants I feel that is a sensitive subject as my son and daughter together with their peers were numeric by the time they went to School at 5, by six or seven they would answer instantly when asked what 7% of 30 was for example. Nothing clever in that, just being taught how to do it in a manner that a child will understand, retain and be able to recall is the key so effectively all in the hands of parents and teachers.
I still have my mental Arithmetic textbooks from the late 50's and as much as I accept standards have changed the debate for better or worse will carry on.
Oh for a nice juicy orange Jubbly now!

My granny, who came originally from a baking family, always referred to a certain kind of bread as a 'half loaf' and yes, this was in Scotland. If you bought a whole one, it would be two baked together. These were what were called 'plain' loaves with a black crust at the top and a dark but floury crust at the bottom. The other kind was a 'pan'loaf - ie baked in an individual tin. Someone posh was said to have a 'pan loaf accent'. I thought the plain loaves were much tastier than the pan ones.

And if you ate the black crust you got curly hair? Or was that just my Granny trying to make me eat the black ones?

It was just any crusts! But I loved the dark Scots ones.

In Dundee the dark crust was a "curly kate" the bottom one a ,"plain geordie"

DH had a Saturday job in Sainsbury's patting and weighing butter. You could buy 2oz then I think. Would have been early 60's

I remember the corner shop with the old Open All Hours style till. Also there was a man who came round our area in a van selling fresh veg.

Butter in barrels which newist and *tanith have already mentioned. Available in 2oz, 4oz upwards. It would be scooped out weighed patted into shape, usually a rectangle with a striped pattern from the butter pats it would then be wrapped in greaseproof paper.

Salmon paste which our local dairy sold in various amounts also wrapped in a twist of greaseproof.

Cooked meat known as Prem I assume it was pork luncheon meat. Pigs trotters, cow heels, tripe, brawn, sweet breads (steers balls) all from the country stalls in our local market. I always refused to tuck in to these delicacies unlike other members of the family.

Dolly blue which you added to your whites when washing a must in our house as my nan had spent the years before her marriage working in a laundry and the years after taking in other folks washing.

Robin starch which made shirts and blouses crackle when worn.

Donkey stones for the step, another must in our household along with red cardinal and possible white to polish the tiles on the steps.

Sugar weighed out into dark blue bags

Donkey stones! We used to borrow one to draw 'beds' for a form of hopscotch known as peevers which involved hopping from square to square moving a flat stone with the side of one's foot, avoiding the lines; or for ball beds, bouncing a ball from square to square. As a quid pro quo I often got the job of whitening the back doorsteps.

We used an empty Kiwi shoe polish tin as the peever.

I had forgotten all about dolly blues for the whites. There was also a yellow coloured one for the nets.
The washing was done in a copper then mangled in the shed then rinsed and mangled again. The washing water was used to wash the kitchen floor at the end of the day. God we don't know we are alive with automatic washing machines.

So did we, Agus, loaded it with gravel from our drive. We also had a treasured peever which was a bit of marble chipped off a corner of granny's marble slab.

National dried milk put into a paper cone and sugar added, absolutely lovely. There was no fuss about quantities of sugar as it was scarce. Anyway we were all skinny!