The Shop in Billinge Road
The Birchall sisters were two more worth writing about. Mrs. Birchall lived in the house next door to Edna's parents, and was a widow. Living with her were her two daughters, Nellie and Kate. She had had 3 more children, Florrie, who never married. Billy, who had married Winnie Aldington, Alice Stockley's Aunt, and Gladys, who had married a chap named Brooks. All of these others were deceased, leaving just Kate and Nellie. Kate was a Downs Syndrome child and Nellie was backward. Nellie, I think, had had "Water on the Brain" or some such illness.
When we took over the shop I should think that Nellie was 60+ and Kate in her 50s. Ma had taken charge of the two women because, a few years earlier, Mrs. Birchall had died, and, as there were no close relatives, someone had to be responsible for them, otherwise they would have had to have gone into a home. It was a big responsibility and mostly, it involved seeing to their washing and sorting their money out.
Of the two, Kate was the most intelligent, and could handle money. Kate was little but quite stout with it, and when Ma used to get clothes for her, she had to practically remake them. It was a shame, really, for them to be in the house on their own, they only had gas for lighting, and Kate would go into Ma's to get Irene or Dad to light the mantle when it grew dark. They ate mostly manufactured stuff like hot pots, pies and chip shop. Sometimes, Ma would give them their dinner, like bacon and potatoes. Kate was really greedy and could eat more or less anything, in fact, one day, someone had given her a mintball in the shop and she swallowed it whole! We thought that she would gag on it but she didn't!
They had a cat, and Kate would take the tin of Kit-e-Kat to Irene to have it opened, and Irene used to hate it! Sometimes, Nellie would bring the tin down to the shop for us to do it. We were sure that sometimes, Kate tried to eat the cat food!!
Nellie could be very awkward when she wished, and sometimes she would come into the shop at near closing time, and stand there, childlike, as we tried to get the sweeping up done. We would have to sweep around her until; finally we had to nearly push her out of the shop.
It didn't seem long before they got too much for Ma, and they were taken away to Brockholes Hospital, near Burnley, and the house was sold to Bulpitts, who had it practically rebuilt, removing most of the doors, windows, floors, stairs, and replacing them all.
There was one tale about the Birchalls that is worth repeating. One day, Kate came into the shop and said that their back window had a hole in it. Ma went up to have a look, and so did I. There was a neat round hole in the glass, and I couldn't help thinking that it looked like a bullet hole. It seemed like it was going to be one of those mysteries that wasn't going to be explained, until, reluctantly Dad said that it was he that had done it. He had an air gun on the pen, which he used to take pot shots at rats with, and one day, in a fit of curiosity, wondered if the gun would carry a shot as far as Birchall's house, which unfortunately it did!!
Edna Dodgin was another of our customers. She was one of Great Aunt Rachel's girls, and was married to Jimmy Dodgin. They had two girls, Pat and Kathleen, and Edna would come into the shop and ask for "Half a loaf" This was a relic of when Ma had the shop, because Ma had told her that she could have half a loaf so that the bread would be fresh!! I don't think that Ma ever thought of what would happen to the other half. When she used to ask for the half loaf, I would say to myself, "Half a loaf is better than none!" It always made me think of the saying. Another of Edna's little ways was that she would buy old potatoes until the bitter end. Everyone else wanted new ones or at least the ones from Cyprus, but not Edna. " Two and a half of old potatoes" was her cry, and finally, I would have to tell her that there were no more.
Nellie Johnson was a schoolteacher married to Jack, a local government official. She was a minister in the Independent Methodist Church, and a very good living person, but completely scatty about animals. I recall the first dog that she had, it was a bad tempered little swine called Sammy. Sammy could do no wrong in her eyes; she even took him with her when she went out preaching. I'm not sure what happened to him, but he departed this life and another took his place. This was Henry, a very large black hound of uncertain parentage, with the most enormous head that you have ever seen on a dog. He looked like the "Hound of the Baskervilles".
Henry developed a penchant for chasing trains on the backfield and finally, the inevitable happened; he caught up with one and exit Henry. Nellie's husband, Jack, while being a whiz with words and figures was completely useless at DIY, and was attempting to inter Henry on the field, using a coal shovel to dig the grave. Finally, someone took pity on him and got a proper digging spade.
Following in Henry's footsteps was another stray from the animal shelter, named Bruce. He was another idiot of a dog who finally met his Waterloo chasing a No 19 bus, and being flattened by the same, but not before he had wrecked the Johnson household. Nellie used to leave him in the house when she went off to school. He tore the curtains down and did all sorts of damage.
Jack was the editor of the church magazine, and one day, Bruce got hold of the post as it came through the door, chewing up all the copy that Jack had been waiting for. He had to ring around to his correspondents for more information!
Jack wasn't the best of drivers, in fact, he was learning to drive at the same time that I was, and when I asked the instructor how he was progressing, he shook his head and said that he would be long time learning. Anyway, he finally passed out as a driver, and they bought a Citroen car, which they garaged in Bold's Yard past our house. One day, Jack, who by this time was known to the people around as "Stirling Moss", asked me to give him a hand in the garage. He said," I've driven it over the blocks and I can't get it back." When I went to look, he had managed to drive the car's front wheels over two 6ins blocks of wood, which had been fixed, to the floor as stop blocks!!
He wrecked the fence belonging to Jack Charnock many times as he reversed out of the garage. One day, however, he tried to start the car and nothing happened. Jack then went down to Trevor Jones' garage for assistance, and some of the lads came back with him. "We'll soon have you started" they said, and pushing him down the road kept calling out to him "Let your clutch out and bump start it" Jack did as he was bidden but to no avail, and finally had reached St Mark's church, with the mechanics still pushing him. One of them said to him "Have you checked the petrol?" and yes, the car was completely dry!!!
Jack had some rotten luck with his car, in fact, once on holiday in the south they were nearly all written off in an accident, the car was really mangled, but one of the most bizarre accidents occurred outside their own front door. The car was parked there one day when a car towing a trailer full of eggs was approaching from Victoria St. As it drew level to it, the trailer broke loose and smashed into Jack's car, the impetus of the smash pushing it forward and driving it into contact with the nearby lamppost.
Jack's car was a write off and the eggs were strewn across the road. The chap whose trailer it was, ended up trying to sell cracked and broken eggs from the side of the road!!
Jack was a heavy smoker and used to come into the shop every day for a new supply. Finally, we came to an agreement; I let him have a 200 pack every week at a discount price. This was the amount that he smoked weekly. One day, however, he decided to stop and he did so. Just like that, a complete stop. Unfortunately for Jack, the move to stop wasn't enough and one day he collapsed and died from a heart attack, whilst playing bowls for the Bethel team. The local paper put out a headline LOCAL MAN DIES IN BOWLING GREEN. Nellie was incensed about the report. Jack had been a lifelong teetotaler and a staunch Methodist, and the report inferred that Jack had been propping up the bar in the Bowling Green pub when he collapsed. She made them print a retraction and say that Jack had been enjoying a quiet game of bowls when the attack had occurred.
Another lifelong smoker who packed it in was Bert Roden. Bert was a really humorous little fellow who had retired from Scot Lane, where he and his wife ran a small mixed business. They had come to live in the house where Alf Brown's family had lived previously. Bert would come into the shop and announce to all and sundry, "Ah'll race anybody up a ladder, if they'll gi' mi a rung start." Sometimes, when the weather was cold, Bert would come in, holding his red nose and say " Dust want a leet?"
His chest was in a terrible state from smoking, and if he lit up in the shop, his cough sounded as if his whole body would break in two. One day he came in to say that he had given cigarettes up, I couldn't believe him at first, but it was true. The change in him was dramatic; he lost his cough, and put on a bit of weight. It was amazing to see it.
We had our share of being "Put upon" or in other words being taken for granted. It's funny, but, when you have a shop, you are looked upon as a convenience in more ways than one. I recall that when Ma had the shop, it was a holiday weekend and she was advising customers that she would be closing. One lady said to her " Are you going off for the day?" to which Ma said that she wasn't. "Well then" was the reply, "What are you closing for?" When old Martha Smith lived in Melling St, she was forever coming to the back door, and her stock phrase was "Ee, ah doan't like troublin' yo" One day she got it wrong and said " Ee ah do like troublin yo" To which our Bill said drily, " She's told the truth for once" One chap came to the back door and as he was waiting to be served, he lifted the lid on the pan that was boiling on the stove to see what was cooking!!
We had a family that came to live in the first house in Melling St, which is the street by the side of the shop. The Simpkins There was Eddie, the father and his wife. Both of them suffering from being "dentally challenged" i.e. toothless. This in itself is no big deal if the people concerned wear dentures, but to see a yawning gap every time they smile is a bit daunting. Also in the family was a teenager, Derek (call me Dirk), and a girl who was younger.
Eddie was a bit "flash" to say the least, and fancied himself as a businessman. One day, he decided to become a financial consultant, whatever that may entail. He had cards printed with his business details and our telephone number!! Talk about hard faced. He came in and said " I hope that you don't mind, but as we haven't got a telephone, I thought that you could give me a shout whenever a client rings up.
The daft part of it was that we fell for it, just to keep his wife coming in to spend her money. The phone would ring, and either Edna or I would run out of the shop and tell him that the phone was ringing for him. I'll bet that his clients thought that Edna and I worked in his office!!
When he picked up the phone, he would close the sliding door so that we couldn't eavesdrop. Dave had him off "Thimpkin here" He would say, mimicking Eddie as he spoke without teeth. Anyway, as luck would have it, the consultancy didn't last long and we got the use of our phone back.
Talking about being taken for granted, one day, during the winter, about Christmas time, Betty Reynolds came into the shop and asked me to run her cousin home in the car. It was snowing quite heavily at the time and I said to Betty, "can she not catch the bus to Upholland," To which Betty replied " No, they've been taken off due to the bad weather" "Well" I said "How do you expect me to get through when buses can't?"
After Winnie Birchall passed on, a couple, which was living together, bought the house where she lived. Joe and Jessie. Jessie was a manageress at Sayers and Joe had a chippy in Hindley Green. They more or less kept themselves to themselves, until one day in November when the lads were putting together their bonfire. It had been a traditional spot for bonfires, in the backs near 106, and Colin Littler, our Jeff and Dave, along with Dot, were gathering stuff for it, piling it up in the square of ground near to Colin's grandma's and of course, near to the back gate of Joe and Jessie. It was quite an impressive pile, as it usually was. Jeff always measured a bonfire in terms of "couches" and this one was a massive 4 coucher. When Joe came home and saw it, he said that it had to go, and that didn't suit the lads. Finally, Joe sent for the fire officer, I thought it a bit "over the top" when the fire chief turned up in his car.
The fire chief said that there had been a complaint, he wouldn't tell me who had made it, but he didn't have to, as we all guessed that Joe had complained. He pointed out the obvious risks that the fire posed and I said that I personally would supervise it. We came to an agreement to reduce the pile a bit before we lit it. This incident made the popularity of Joe and Jessie lower than ever, coupled with the fact that they had had words with our Bill about something, and Joe had lost the argument, calling our Bill a "Philadelphia lawyer". Dad started to call them "the Tallies" i.e. living together and not married. They left the district for Hindley soon afterwards and the house was sold to Eric Heyes and his family.
We had our share of interesting customers, Annie Boyle being one of them. Annie was married to Frank and had a son Christopher. Chris was a precocious child and very self-assured. His parents bought him a typewriter and he would write letters to the press on various subjects. Annie was one of old Ada Dean's children and had been brought up at Mitchell St chapel, but she married into the Catholic Church. She never had any time for religion really, but Chris attended St Cuthbert's school, and later on, St John Rigby College.
When Chris was going to St Cuthbert's, Annie would walk him to the bottom of Billinge Road every day, and take him to school. As he was a little fat lad, Dad, who had a very quirky sense of humour, used to call him "little piggy trotters". He used to look so prim and proper with his stockings to his knees and his short pants on. All the kids at St Cuthbert's were laying bets that when he started at John Rigby, his mother would bring him to the bus but she managed not to!!
One day, Annie brought a tin of salmon back to the shop, which she said had some glass in. It turned out to be a piece of rock salt that was used in the process. She told us that "Our Chris had sent a typewritten letter to Princes Foods" complaining about it. The rep came to see us about the offending tin, and of course sent them an apologetic parcel of free food.
Annie had her teeth out early in life, and never wore her false ones. She told us that once, as they were coming back to this country from a holiday in Canada, they were stopped by the customs at Heathrow, and although Annie never wore her teeth, she always carried them with her in a box. The customs official was rummaging through their luggage, when he came across the box, "What's in here?" He said. Annie told him that the box contained her teeth but plainly the man didn't believe her and he opened the box. I would have loved to have been there to see the look on his face!!
Mrs Sharp was another of our customers; she had taken the house in Melling St, and was the occupier before the Simpkins. She was a widow, who had been married to Sam Sharp They had originally lived in a house facing Harcros, but when Sam had died, Mrs Sharp had moved to Melling St so that her son Cliff and his family could have the other one.
She was a very nice person, and was managing quite well on her own after the death of her husband, but she had started to have bouts of dizziness and had got a bit unsteady on her feet. I'll never forget the day; it was the morning after the 5th November bonfire. Martha Winstanley, Bill's wife, who was her next-door neighbour, came into the shop in tears. "I think that there's something up next door," She said. "There's a note on the back door that says 'Beware gas', and I can't make Mrs Sharp hear me when I knock on the door." I went round to the house with Bill and he shoulder charged the front door. The house reeked of gas!!
When we went into the glass shed where the cooker was, Mrs Sharp was lying across two chairs, with her head in the open oven. She was wearing her nightdress and a cardigan and she had placed a cushion in the oven to rest her head on. I touched her bare leg, but she was stone cold and stiff. I said to Bill, "We had better send for the Police, she's obviously dead".
When the Police came, they had to inform her relatives. She had placed the insurance policies on the table, put money out to cover outstanding bills, left a note to say that she didn't want to live any longer, and then just put enough money in the meter to do the job. It was really quite sad.
Another story involving gas springs to mind, but this one didn't involve any deaths. One Monday morning, as I was awaiting customers, Monday being a pretty slack day anyway, I heard what sounded like a dull thud. About a couple of minutes passed, and then, suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps running frantically down the road. The telephone was situated across the road near the hospital fence, and this man dashed into the box. Soon a police car and ambulance rushed up the road, sirens blaring. I was itching to know what had gone on but I couldn't find out.
To get the full story, I had to wait for the local paper that night. What had happened was this, A man from Edinburgh Drive had had a tiff with his wife about something, I don't know what, it may have been about another woman for all I know. Anyway, this man and his wife both worked for the bus company and were on different shifts. The man had come in during the morning, probably on a split shift or something, decide to end it all and had turned on the gas taps of the cooker, after which he had switched on the electric fire and lain down in front of it on the rug.
Of course, he had no idea that the fire would ignite the gas, and when the gas spread to the fire it did just that, blowing the windows out and taking off most of the roof tiles!! He was slightly burned and no doubt concussed, but otherwise still alive with his suicide bid aborted.
Mrs Sharp's daughter in law, Jessie was a real tight wad when it came to spending. She was a Yorkshire woman who came from Brighouse and met Cliff Sharp when he was in the forces. She used to say, "I'll have to borrow off myself this week" I don't know how anyone can do that really! She had two children, Janet and Stephen. Stephen was a really dreamy lad and it didn't surprise me to be told that after university, he became an industrial psychiatrist.
There was another character, but she will remain nameless for obvious reasons. We were having a small problem with disappearing stock, i.e. shoplifting. I said to Edna one day, "have you sold any tins of boiled ham lately?" When she said that she hadn't I thought to myself, "someone is helping themselves here" We decided to keep a lookout and try to pin it down to whoever it was that was doing it. We managed to get down to about three suspects, but we still had to find the right one. I thought of an idea, why not set a trap and see if we could stop it? I asked one of our customers for some fishing line, not telling him what I wanted it for, and with this, I linked all the tins on the shelf together, taking the line through the openers which were fixed to the back of the tins, and giving enough slack to allow the tins to be lifted from the shelf. We didn't sell a lot of boiled ham in tins, as most of it was sold loose in two ounces or quarters, so I knew that there wouldn't be much of a problem with it falling from the shelf.
We had an idea by this time who the culprit was and we were waiting for the trap to be sprung. There was one false alarm though when a genuine customer picked a tin up and brought all the line down on the floor! Anyway, this one particular day when the trap was sprung for real, I was in the shop on my own, Edna being out for some reason or other, when our prime suspect came in. Our Dave had come into the shop at the time, and when this customer asked for a piece of fish to be skinned (we were selling wet fish at the time), I went into the back of the shop to do it, calling for Dave to come with me, leaving our suspect on her own in the shop.
We heard the clatter of tins and when we got back into the shop, she was clutching her tummy and saying, "I'll have to go home, my stomach is hurting me!" It was, it had a tin of ham wedged against it!!
I let her go off home, and my heart was pounding! "What shall I do now?" I thought. I didn't want any fuss but I wanted to put a stop to it. Anyway, her husband was working nearby, so I went to see him. He was completely flabbergasted. "We don't even like boiled ham" He said. He came to see me later on in the evening and brought back with him to the shop about 6 tins of ham, which he had discovered in their cupboard. I told him that no one else need know about the incident, and to tell his wife to carry on coming into the shop as usual. She was going through the menopause at the time and we put it down to that. She was a bit sheepish at first but she soon became her usual self again. One thing was for sure though; we never left her on her own in the shop again!!
Continued...