Friday, 15 December 2023
Old Shops
Memories fade, but as I remember them, old shops had a certain aroma. A sweetly fusty, sooty aroma sometimes mingled, paraffin, soap and scrubbed floorboards.
There was once a shop round here with an evocative aroma. It sold everything from rat traps and cast-iron grates to Mr Kipling cakes and cheap alarm clocks made in China. An odd mix of old and new where the new was likely to be imported rubbish. Gone now and the aroma will have gone too.
Her shop subsisted in its corner by reason of the conservatism of poor neighbourhoods. She sold penny yellow and black tea mugs that came from a pottery down Bristol way — tea mugs of a pattern one hundred and fifty years old. She sold brown moist sugar that was nearly black, and had something the flavour of liquorice, such as none of the new stores sold or would have known where to buy. She sold red herrings from a factory on the east coast that had been established two hundred and fifty years, and that had only three or four customers.
She sold medicinal herbs in packets and cooked pig’s-trotters — which she boiled herself — as well as penny broad-sheet ballads that were hung up all over the shop, and onions from Brittany that depended in long ropes all down the window. Her profits from the establishment, except at Christmas and about the fifth of November, when she sold fireworks, were seldom more than seventeen and six, and never less than nine shillings a week. In return she was the dictatress of opinions and the wise woman of Henry Street, James Street, and Charles and Augusta Mews, Westminster.
Ford Madox Ford - Mr Fleight (1913)
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9 comments:
There are certain smells which are becoming very rare, and so are extremely evocative. Clothes that have been kept with mothballs. Cheap coarse string. Carbolic soap. Fishing tackle, especially the old cotton keep-nets. And the best of all : creosote.
I remember the smell of ironmongers. A mix of paraffin, creosote and carbolic soap. Even the early Wilkinsons in Leicester used to smell like that.
And then 'loose' paraffin, 'loose' creosote and unwrapped carbolic soap were no longer on sale and the smell faded into memory. And so have Wilkinsons. I wonder if there is a lesson to be learned?
"onions from Brittany": I think I remember Onion Johnnies. Or do I merely remember cartoons of Onion Johnnies? Slippery item, childhood.
Sam - ah yes, mothballs and carbolic soap are certainly evocative for me. Even though it is still fairly common, I also find lavender evocative, possibly because of lavender polish. The aroma of roast beef brings back memories of mother-in-law's excellent Sunday dinners too.
DJ - I don't know if they still do it, but at one time supermarkets supposedly manipulated the aroma of their premises. I don't notice it in Sainsbury's and I can't imagine anyone in the future saying "oh that aroma reminds me of the old Sainsbury's store."
dearieme - I remember knowing about Onion Johnnies and seeing them depicted here and there, but I don't think I ever saw one. We probably lived too far inland.
Whenever I read of old shops that sold 'everything', the Two Ronnie's sketch of "Four Candles" jumps to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_6SaqVQSw
When I was an infant in one of the remote parts of Scotland we had an "onion johnny" call at our rural "cottage" ( an ex military wartime accommodation "shed") up a road with so little traffic that my younger sister would run screaming into the shed whenever she heard a car or lorry engine.
He had maybe a dozen or ten onions, hanging one below the other from braided leaves, with the bike's handle bars, and cross bar draped with these strings.
He was pushing the bike not riding.
My mum bought some and I was far to young to wonder about the economics and logistics of bringing onions all the way from France.I
The rural general store was another place of wonder, stretching far into the gloom.
Another story.
DAD - young people probably wouldn't recognise the type of shop in that Two Ronnie's sketch. Who buys candles that don't come in packets?
Doonhamer - interesting, I wonder who he was. He surely wasn't based in France.
Onion Johnny.
He obviously spoke good enough English to be understood in an area where outsiders would be struggling to understand the locals. In those days there was no fear of strangers.
In that post War time unemployed people would do anything to make a bob or two.
In the local small town, horses and carts, a la Steptoe, were common.
Clothes pegs would be carved from hedgerow branches, and sold round doors..
Apart from general scrap being sought for cash there was one trading empty jam jars for balloons. Another would collect horse manure - common on the roads for selling on.
Every year, in early autumn, at our primary school we would have the same couple of children join our class for a week or two. The families, from Ireland, were here for potato picking -tattie howking. The families would follow the ripening crop up Scotland's West and found by Fyfe.
I can remember no prejudice against these "tinkers". Tinkers were useful people and we were all struggling together to eke out an existence.
One time in the 60s on a longish bike ride I saw one of their accomodations. I do not know what they were called. Here is the sort of thing I saw.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/486811040964798133/
How lucky are we.
Doonhamer - how lucky we are indeed, it's not a bad idea to remember it every now and then as we focus on the stupidities. That's an interesting link - I've seen one or two oil paintings where a "tinker's" tent is similarly depicted but in a rather idyllic woodland setting.
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