Wigan Album

I think you may have also caught my late mother out shopping, from the back it certainly looks like her.

Oh! What memories!! I remember buying red peppers here in 1976. I was painting them for my Art 'O' level. It took a few stalls but, I got them. When I got home, my mother asked: "What's them?" I think the first time I ate a mushroom was 16. So, how many folk in Wigan bought the pineapples as pictured on this series. Until the the 80's, I thought they came in chunks out of a tin; to be served on sticks with cheese!!!!

I can remember my Auntie Edna would only have spuds that had dirt on them.

I remember the fruit market well. There used to be tissue paper round the tangerines at Christmas, and when you unfolded it, it had foreign words on, from wherever the tangerines had come from. The fish market was also separate from the main Market Hall.

I used to have a Saturday job (I was just 16) on Lewis's store back in the 60's. Bill Lewis would send me for a box of bicarbonate of soda which I'd put in a tub of cold water, and plunge the cabbage into to keep them fresh. I got fifteen bob for the day, and Mrs Lewis senior would slip me a packet of Benson & Hedges as well. I remember the banter with the customers - 'Lovely apples, hard as a brick, sweet as a nut.' Good memories of cheerful hard-working Wigan folk.