half loaf

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

Yummy

I loved that orange juice?

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

Sugar weighed out into dark blue bags

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.