half loaf

Paying the lady at our local store involved her putting the money in a container and sending it flying on ropes and pulleys to a cashier sitting in a kiosk high up - she would do the receipt and the change, put them into the canister and send it down to the counter. Crazy system, but such fun for children to watch!

Our Grandfather used to give us a stalk of rhubarb from the garden and a poke of sugar to dip it in. Yum

We would do that when we got home from school, Agus - raw rhubarb and a poke of sugar... yum!

Mishap, our co-op operated that system too.

delicious orange juice from the clinic and vitamin drops, sweet tobacco, blue stone for rubbing on bee stings, REAL cream cheese - have never tasted the like since. I remember running home from a Beatles concert, racing my sister, for the last piece of cream cheese, I tripped and fell and gashed my head open on a concrete cornered lamp post, I screamed so loud that police came and ambulance. I was taken to hospital for stitches - the bruising spread down my face and continued for weeks. That taught me!

Simple pleasures anno and one of many happy memories of visits to my Grandparents.

Flour in muslin bags,my mother washed them for us to use as hankies at school, to save losing the proper hankies.
Ditto the rhubarb, but also cocoa and sugar mixed together in a cone of newspaper, lovely.

Grocer's shops were such lovely places to go into, all sorts of smells and queuing and food cut/weighed/measured to order and lots of people. As well as all the things other people remember - sugar weighed in blue paper bags - and having the empty bags to draw on afterwards, and the butter and broken biscuits I remember cheese with rind on it. You peeled the cloth off it when you got home and the cheese close to the rind had a tremendous intensity of flavour, many people would leave the rind or use it in cooking, but I would eat it given the opportunity.

I can remember, when my mother had a tiny baby and younger sister, both with severe whooping cough, being sent down the road to the bakery on the next corner to buy the bread, fresh and sliced to order - I was six, it was winter, in Carlisle, and I would go after school in the dark. Nobody thought anything of it, nor would I be the only child there. Imagine if a parent did that nowadays!!

The best thing about our village grocer was the huge coffee grinding machine which was red and black with a huge brass top where the beans went in. If we children were really good we were allowed to turn the enormous handle [or provide free labour for Mr Taylor!]

I used to drop in the order book on my way to school and Alistair used to deliver it later that morning on a real old fashioned delivery bike.

We lived about 2 miles outside a small country town in Scotland with around 3-4 buses a day. A fellow with his horse and cart used to sell bread etc and frequently my mother was out with a shovel and brush to collect the horse droppings as manure for the garden.

Sounds familiar, Charleygirl. The Co-op baker had a horse and wagon and used to shout 'Bak-e-e-e-er' very loudly as the horse chomped on its nose bag. It was usually my dad who rushed around with a shovel for the manure.

Going to the Maypole with my grandmother, who was given a chair, on which sat as she dictated her order. Each item was presented for inspection. She'd then pay, and the groceries would be delivered at a time decreed by her. AND I was always given a biscuit!

The Mayople had a black and whit marble floor, and brass weights for the scales. And it smelled wonderful. Gosh, that is all about 62 years ago...

Lots of memories here. Does anyone else remember the 'salted peanut' machine. I think they were in Woolworths. The nuts were warm and were dispensed in paper bags which soaked up the oil. Woolworth always had wooden floors too.

Dolly blue bags for the sheets etc - forgotten about them. Spangles, acid drop ones being my favourite. Listening to Uncle Mac on Saturday mornings playing songs like Nelly the Elephant etc. Forces Favourites on Sundays, The Navy Lark, The Goon Show, Round the Horne, Childrens' Hour in the late afternoon. We used to have a late tea whilst listening to Childrens' Hour - tea [all ages drank tea then], crumpets or potato cakes with a sponge cake one week or a fruit cake the next. I had weekly pocket money so that was spent on my comic books - Girl and School Friends - and on sweets. My grandparents who we lived with whilst Dad was abroad, used to treat us to Saturday morning pictures at the ABC. I think it was a treat for them to get us out the way for a few hours.
Then I was 12 years old and started to get interested in boys, I dumped Girl for Valentine where people kissed!!! Gads.

I'm sure my Grandfather and then my Father shovelled up the 'dung' as we called it, then put it round the rhubarb

I remember those machines ginny. I don't have a sweet tooth and always went for the salted peanuts rather than the sweeties.

Flower - Oh that orange juice from the clinic. It tasted so good.

I loved that orange juice?

Yummy

I could never have that orange juice as it made me red raw.......^down there^!
I've always felt deprived

Watching the man in the Co-op cut a piece of cheese from the block with a cheese wire. It was lovingly wrapped in greaseproof paper. Then mum would ask for "6 slices of back bacon, cut thin". He would do this on the bacon slicer. You paid at a little kiosk as it wasn't the done thing for the server to touch money. In another shop we'd buy a sachet of Halo shampoo for our once a week hair wash!

I bet we can all remember our mum's Co-op divi number. I know I can!

And my Nan's! My nan used to keep her checks, which were yellow, perforated and ripped out of a book with carbon paper in between the sheets, on a bill hook so she could check whether her divi was right and, if it wasn't she'd take them all to the office and tell them.

As well as orange juice, we were given cod liver oil and malt, I loved it!
I seem to remember being sent to buy eggs, which were given in a paper bag and falling over on the way home.Mam was not pleased!
Our Co-op sounds just like yours, inishowen as does the bacon order.

I too remember a spoonful of malt extract each day. I used to choose the spoon and always got the biggest one I could find. What about rose-hip syrup and picking the rose-hips. We used to take them to school on Mondays and get paid for them. I was also a "rose-hip monitor" and had the job of collecting them from each class, weighing them and calculating how much they were worth- big responsibility!!

I loved the orange juice and the cod liver oil and the malt. As for the horse dung, it was my Grandma who would rush out and collect that!

If any milk went sour, which in summer with no fridge it did, my mother and grandmother would strain it through a muslin cloth to make cottage cheese.

I've just bought malt extract, lovely on hot buttered toast.