Long ago and far away in a land we now call Essex, a curios child once lived, in a village called Little Waltham. The village was quiet but well served by, two pubs, a school, two community halls, a doctor’s surgery, a cricket club with a lovely pavilion and playing fields, with swings and slide and roundabout.
The shops there were always busy and served the villagers well… and what ingenious ways they had…
At the bottom of the hill, over the bridge and next door to the pub, was a bakery. Freshly baked cakes and bread were lined up upon glass shelves, in the window, and inside, wooden drawers, lined with paper, held more doughy delights. The baker brought bread and cakes, in a huge square, basket, around to the houses and, if the children were on their best behaviour, they could choose their favourite… a Chelsea bun, Eccles cake, iced bread bun, or a delicious London cheesecake, covered in white icing and topped with chewy squiggles of candied coconut!
Heading back up the village you would find a green-painted, wooden boarded house, with big glass windows and a glazed door which, when opened, rang a little bell to alert its owner. It was indeed a Shangri-La… Mrs Fewell’s! The inside of the shop was all about dark wood… walls, floors, shelves and counters. Half of the shop given over to wools and yarns of every hue, stacked in perfect order, like fluffy, pastel-coloured soldiers. But much, much more importantly, the other half of the shop stocked SWEETS! The shelves here were crammed with jars and boxes of cellophane twinkling, glossy, sugary delights that were carefully doled out by the stooping, overall-wearing, hawkeyed, Mrs Fewell herself. The elderly lady, beckoned by the sound of the doorbell, would say little, but she deftly flicked open a small paper bag and offered it forward to be crammed full of the sticky favourites… shrimps, liquorice pipes, blackjacks, fruit salads, gobstoppers and snowball bubble gum. Then with a pinch and a twist, the bag was sealed and a gnarly hand was proffered forward to receive funds. The unbridled joy in a paper bag.
“There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.” – Marie Antoinette.
The Post Office and general grocery shop, with its three tall steps and its imposing, glossy, red and black door, was the domain of Mrs Barry. Austere, angular and blue-rinsed, she sat upon the tall stool, at the wooden booth that was the Post Office counter. Her icy glance could freeze a child at fifty paces and all the villagers knew that she fastidiously managed a very tight ship!
Mrs Barry was a shrewd businesswoman and issued many households with a small, red notebook. In this the ‘housewife’ would make a shopping list of the comestibles she required and, on the appointed day, would send a child to ‘Mrs Barry’s’ with the book. A couple of days later a cardboard box of groceries would be delivered to the door. The box containing, Campbell’s soup and Heinz baked beans, butter, eggs, sugar and, if you were very lucky, a clutch of long, long, strands of spaghetti, wrapped in royal blue paper and bearing an exotic looking yellow and red paper label…authentically Italian.
At the junction, on the corner, beneath a mature horse chestnut tree stood W. Campen or, as everyone knew it, ‘John the Butcher’s. Sausages and beef burgers were sublime, the like of which can never have been repeated and most certainly never bettered. Always a ruddy smile from John and all the meaty marvels wrapped up in greaseproof paper and popped into a welcoming shopping bag.
Oh how well the neighbourhood was served. All this and the doorstep deliveries from the Corona man, who brought fizzy drinks and collected the empty bottles, the veg van and the paraffin man, who refilled your own can, every week, so you could keep the paraffin heater going…a bugger of a hazard if you were of a mind to flit about in your Pippadee nightie!
Were the villagers groundbreaking, or super sustainably minded? Was there chatter at the school gates of saving the seas and protecting the, hard pushed, planet? No it was just how it was… sensible, practical, but not wasteful. Somehow it seems that we should indeed look backwards and not be forever hurtling ahead. Paper bags, unwrapped, unsliced bread, reusable and returnable vessels, local shops, personal service and home deliveries… what a world it could be.
Oh, and while we are on the subject the milk was always, always delivered to your doorstep in an electric vehicle! Who knew!?