Turning left along Manchester Road you came first to the workshop of Swindlehurst’s funeral directors on the corner. An eighty year old neighbour used to go in for a daily chat and told us he always had a look at the wood put aside for his coffin and gave it a stroke on the way out. The two owners were very involved with the operatic society, helping to make and store the scenery and floor risers and acting as ticket agents. It astounded passers-by to see a queue of people outside the undertakers on the first day of booking seats.
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1930 Local Business Adverts
My least favourite shop was the barber’s where my father and brothers had their hair cut by a long, thin, laconic man. He sold shaving soap and I went very cautiously into this male preserve. The customers laughed to see me there and Joe teased me, holding his scissors over my hair and threatened to cut it off, or dabbing shaving soap from his brush on my nose and chin making me sneeze as I tried not to swallow any. Uggh! It tasted horrible. I was once given a milk shake by a visiting Canadian friend and as I took a sip I pulled a face and said it tasted like shaving soap. He was puzzled that I knew the taste. How he laughed when I told him!
There was an intriguing shop across the road.
It was the ‘Lamb Poil’ shop. I knew what a lamb was but never found out what a ‘poil’ looked like. As soon as I entered my nostrils were full of the smell of camphor, chemicals and paraffin, partly nasty and partly enjoyable. There was so much stuff everywhere you could scarcely move although the shopkeeper could immediately put her hand on anything. I had to be careful not to knock over any of the stoves, huge batteries etc. as I negotiated my way to the counter. We went to buy donkey stones to whiten the doorstep and the flagged front path. What rivalry there was to have the cleanest path and to be the earliest to finish! Some people even donkey-stoned the pavement. The shop also sold Zebo and emery paper to blacklead and clean the fire grate and coal hole cover.
Nearby was Thornley’s sweet shop where our friend Marie lived. They sold the most yummy sweets in a shiny clean shop and my father used to buy a mixed bag on Sunday to share around with us. We thought Marie was the luckiest girl on earth to live there and longed to be able to shout ‘It’s only me’ and walk straight through the shop into the living room, then come out, as we thought, to have a pick of the merchandise. During the war we used to spend our coupons there, chosing our favourites then swopping one for one with our sisters outside to have a tasty mix. The bars of chocolate were kept in the living room behind and reserved for special customers.
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