Looking back: It's the little things in life which make us happy

Happy that you have a roof over your head. That you don’t have to rely on food banks to eat or charity shops for clothes. That you can afford to put the heating on (occasionally!)

Did you ever think you would feel excited at getting a free carrier bag in a shop? Isn’t it funny how we took it for granted before. It can be difficult to remember to take a bag out with us, especially if we are intending to buy clothes and isn’t it funny how we can purchase a nice jumper, but feel indignant that we have to spend money on a bag to put it in.

Was it the ‘good old days’ as far as shopping?

I used to go with my mother to the greengrocers shop on Hatfield House Lane. There were no carrier bags in those days, so everyone took a shopping bag The bag always had a layer of soil in the bottom as the potatoes were put in first. There was no packaging of any sort and so the carrots went in next, followed by onions, sprouts, apples, bananas, and oranges. Weighing was done using brass weights.

Things were a little different at Castledines, the grocers next door. Goods were placed into brown paper bags, except for sugar which was scooped up and put into a blue bag. There were mounds of ‘tub’ butter and lard on the counter which was shaped into blocks with wooden spatulas and put into greaseproof paper. And a big block of cheese, usually Kraft, was cut with a wire cutter.

Enormous sides of bacon and ham were also on the counter, covered with pieces of white muslin. You could request thick or thin slices. Bits were put into a box, and it was possible to buy a bag of bits to use for sandwiches. Tea was kept in plywood chests and weighed out into pound or half pound amounts. No tea bags in those days!!!

The most wonderful thing about the grocers shop for us was the shelf with the glistening jars of sweets. It was particularly attractive after 1953 when sweets came off ration with sixpence buying a hoard of dolly mixtures, love hearts, liquorice allsorts, sherbet lemons, gob stoppers or wine gums.

Previously we eked out the sweets we’d managed to obtain by putting cocoa and sugar into a newspaper cone and dipping our fingers in, or by doing the same with a stick of rhubarb, but without the cocoa! Everyone grew rhubarb in their gardens in those days!

The diversity of goods sold was amazing. You could buy bread, hairnets, medicines, hardware and even a jug of beer at some grocers who had a beer pump in a corner of the counter. And a shillings worth of broken biscuits!

Children would take empty bottles which had contained Dandelion and Burdock or Cream Soda making a few pence to exchange for sweets. In times of hardship it was even possible to purchase one cigarette or even one egg, and have expenditures put ‘on the slate’