OPEN ALL HOURS.

[Stanley]

OPEN ALL HOURS.

I’ve been reading the extracts from Edgar Wormwell’s book in the BET and decided I wanted a copy so I went down to Earby today, pressed £8 into Eunice’s hand and got a copy. (Ask in the library for Si Thee on T’Brig.) I got home and read it cover to cover without stopping and think it’s wonderful. He’s captured the atmosphere of Kelbrook so well that it triggered me off into thinking about the time in the fifties when the family and I kept the grocer’s shop next to Sough Mill. I spent quite a lot of time in Kelbrook because, being single, the big attraction was the Craven Heifer where I too made an acquaintance with King’s Ale! (By the way, if you look on the 1853 ordnance map the pub was called the Scotchman’s Arms)
I’ve always said that being Arkwright and running the shop at Sough was one of the best bits of education I ever had. Whenever ‘Open All Hours’ is repeated on the TV I try to watch it because it reminds me of the days when we sold everything from boiled ham to fire-lighters with greengrocery and a café for the workers at Bristol Tractors, Forecast Foundry and Kelbrook Sheet Metal thrown in. My Mother and I used to make about fifty bacon butties every morning and then she did a hot dinner for about twenty-five that we served in the room behind the shop. We also ran a mobile shop and I used to go out three days a week round the farms delivering orders and selling out of the back of the van. It was hard work because I was also working part time for West Marton Dairies in the early days and full time later for Harrison Brothers who were carriers for the dairy. In summer I used to start at two in the morning and work until eight o’clock at night, I can tell you I loved my bed and didn’t get much time for the pub.
Looking back it is amazing what we sold in that shop, there were odd occasions when we were caught out but I can remember selling gas mantles, wicks for paraffin brooder lamps and donkey stones. Everything was sold loose in those days, we weighed sugar up in two pound blue bags and I was a dab hand at wrapping butter cut out of the slab or slicing cheese with a wire cheese-cutter and getting very close to the weight that was asked for. A modern Health Inspector would blanch at the rudimentary level of hygiene but funnily enough I don’t remember there ever being any complaints about people getting food poisoning. My own theory is that we were all getting a drip feed of low-level infection and this protected us against anything worse.
There were few perks when you were behind the counter but I’m afraid I have to confess to one bad habit, I loved the purple wrapped chocolates in Quality Street and White Heather that had the hazel nut in them. I used to pick them out of the jars and eat them! I remember one lady saying that it was funny but they didn’t seem to be putting them in the mixture any more. In those days I smoked cigarettes and never went short while we had the shop.
One of the great things about a village shop was that you got to know everyone and heard all the gossip, we knew who was bothering with whom before anyone else! We also got to know all the characters, there was Billy Banks who lived in Barlick but worked at Bristol Tractors. He used to come to work on a cycle that had a Power Pack engine on the back wheel. The funny thing was that he used the engine when he was coming to work in the morning but not when he went home at night. I couldn’t understand this as it was all downhill in the morning and uphill at night. I asked him one day why he didn’t do it the other way round and he informed me it used too much petrol! I suppose he had a point but it seemed all wrong to me. Eddie Lancaster came in regularly for his sixty Players Navy Cut Cigarettes a day and I soon got to know him, he worked for West Marton Dairies delivering bottled milk to the depots in Barlick, Nelson and Burnley and I used to go with him when I had any spare time to give him a hand. It was through doing this that I eventually started to work as a driver at the dairy. We always used to stop at the Craven Heifer on the way home at night and have a pint or two. As my Dad used to say, ‘One’s just right, two’s too many and three isn’t half enough’. It got to closing time many a night before we came out and boy did we have some fun!
Ted Talbot and his wife Gladys Redfern (as was) were licensees at that time and Eddie and I spent many a happy hour early doors with Gladys in the bar. I remember one cold wet night in November we got in at about half past five and were glad to see a big coal fire roaring up the chimney at the end of the bar. We sat on two stools getting the maximum benefit and Gladys opened the door out of the bar next to the fireplace and stood there chatting to us. At this time, Gladys was waiting to go into hospital for an operation on her stomach and we knew she was having a lot of pain. All of a sudden she moaned and we immediately jumped up and tried to get her to sit down but she wouldn’t let us touch her. We hovered there waiting for her to collapse or something but after a few minutes she stirred and said she was all right. We asked her whether it was her stomach and she told us “No, it was my suspenders, they were red hot with standing in front of the fire!” We had a good laugh but she had put the wind up us.
In those days everyone had their favourite seat in the bar. Old Mrs Turner used to have the one at the end of the bench closest to the fire and woe betide you if you didn’t get up when she came in. Dobbin Berry and Charlie Lancaster, both farmers in Kelbrook, always occupied the two seats next to her. They were both a good age and used to go everywhere together. I saw them one day when they had been to Gisburn Races and asked them how they had got on. Dobbin said that they had backed every winner bar the last one and if they’d had any money left they would have backed that one as well! The problem was of course that the winners were all low priced favourites and they were boozing the money away faster than they could win it. They always drank halves of bitter and it was amazing how much they could put away in a day. I asked Charlie one day how old he was, he wouldn’t tell me but he said that old folk in Kelbrook were like horse muck, they didn’t die, they just dried up and blew away. I was in the churchyard at Kelbrook not long ago and found both their graves. They are very close to each other just as they were in life. Nice.
In those days I was as fit as a butcher’s dog, I could work hard all day and had an appetite to match. After a few pints in the Heifer I used to go across the road to Albert’s chip shop and have fish, chips and peas twice then go back in the pub and have some of Gladys’ stew and hard. I never put any weight on or lost any, I was exactly 168 lbs and stayed at that for years. I don’t know about you lot but nowadays if I look at a chocolate cake I can feel the weight piling on.
In 1959 I bought Hey Farm and we had the benefit of a little corner shop at the end of Crow Row (Longfield Lane). It was run by Mrs Brown and was a wonderfully tiny place where you could get almost anything you wanted. All these little shops have gone now, killed by the supermarkets and ease of travel. The problem with this is that once the habit is formed to go out of town to the supermarkets the other shops in the town suffer. It’s hard to imagine now but forty years ago you could find a blacksmith, a shoe shop, a bespoke tailor, a picture framer, a general drapers and even a crumpet and oatcake maker, all in the centre of the town. Nowadays we have plenty of tanning salons and nail replacement boutiques but very few shops selling what I would regard as really useful items and those that are left will tell you they aren’t making a fortune.
I suppose that what we are looking at is change. Reading Edgar’s book reminded me about Kelbrook and I’m certain that people who live there will have noted changes, not all for the better. I look at Barlick as a historian and recognise that what we are looking at is our history progressing and developing. I don’t like many of the changes, my reaction is to shop inside the town whenever I can but I do realise that not everyone can afford to do this. We can’t go back to loose butter and sugar in blue bags but whenever possible we should stand up on our hind legs and voice our opinion about what is happening. We are lucky enough to live in a unique little town with many advantages, we should do all we can to preserve the best aspects of it.

17 August 2000