Fancy a trip down memory lane?

M0nica

My town still has a real cobbler. I took my shoes to him to get them reheeled only a few weeks ago - I do not mean Timpsons. He also repairs any kind of leatherwear. A rare survival.

I remember the broken biscuits in the glass topped tins.

Bacon offcuts have reappeared recently after being absent for decades. My local butcher and local farm shops offer them. They are now usually called 'lardons', the French word for bacon bits. The revival led by lots of people seeing them in French supermarkets and delis.

Most DIY stores these days mix your paint to order. It is quite fascinating to see all the different pigments needed to make any one colour

The splendid Cheryl Bakes on Tik Tok makes some lovely food, and often uses what she calls ‘ cooking bacon’ from Lidl, which looks like offcuts. She can manage very substantial dishes from one packet.

Milk delivered by horse and cart, 3d back on empty pop bottles, ice cream from the Italian grocer collected in a bowl with t-towel cover and run home before it melted. I will watch later.

ferry23 - thanks for the link. It was fascinating and so nice to see pictures of things that most people didn't even think of taking a photo of, even if they had a camera. Developing pictures was expensive so people didn't normally spend money taking pictures of everyday things like this.

My favourite was the paraffin can being filled. I had to take two empty gallon cans round the corner to the shop and carry them home full. The design of the cans meant they cut into your fingers and were quite painful to carry due to the weight. Thankfully we didn't live too far from the shop or I don't know how I'd have managed. I was about 9-11 years old at the time.

We still have a wet fish shop in our road, sells whelks, cockles, jellied eels along with a multitude of fresh fish and seafood.
We also have a cobblers and an independent hardware store (mixes paint to your preferred shade) in the same road.

We do have an independent butchers as well.

My town still has a real cobbler. I took my shoes to him to get them reheeled only a few weeks ago - I do not mean Timpsons. He also repairs any kind of leatherwear. A rare survival.

I remember the broken biscuits in the glass topped tins.

Bacon offcuts have reappeared recently after being absent for decades. My local butcher and local farm shops offer them. They are now usually called 'lardons', the French word for bacon bits. The revival led by lots of people seeing them in French supermarkets and delis.

Most DIY stores these days mix your paint to order. It is quite fascinating to see all the different pigments needed to make any one colour

Broken biscuits from Woolies
Bacon off cuts
Offal, and chicken giblets and chicken necks lots of meat on them but patience needed
Cobblers mending your shoes
Shops that sold hardware, loose screws, nails, tacks etc
Paint that could be mixed to desired colours
Wallpaper shops
Butchers with carcasses hanging up outside dripping blood onto the pavement
Butchers with sharp knives and cutting blocks
In my town a thriving fish industry
Music shops with listening booths where you could listen to the lastest hits (without buying them !)
Red telephone boxes where everyone queued at 6 pm when the price was cheaper.
Cycles everywhere especially when the factories shut for the day

In the 50s we bought a pint of winkles and cockles from a man on a bike.
Also from french men on bikes strings of onions. We lived on the south east coast so I expect they came over on the ferry from France.
But I used to go cockling in the local bay as well with a school friend . Havent had cockles for years and years.

Yes to broken biscuits in those boxes with lift up glass lids.
I think I loved being a child of the 50s.

I remember the broken biscuits in glass-topped boxes in our local grocer's shop.

My dad usually soled and heeled our shoes as he had his own last (he was actually an engineer).