TO RETIREMENT
0205 Local Shopping
Post-war, our food buying was constrained by the ubiquitous ration book. Thus, in the early part of my life on Bromborough Pool, the village shop was all that mattered.
Later on, when I went to Imperial College, Pat and I used shop in South Kensington. In particular we used to shop in a lovely little delicatessen. It was actually quite small, but still operated as a sort of self-service mini-supermarket. But, even so, it contained all the goodies we could ever have wished for; with processed meats from different countries and cheeses from around the world. The smell of the place was fabulous by itself. As a result, we used to love shopping there on the way home. We had many culinary adventures with the food we bought in it. I can still remember the excitement of the exotic tastes we worked our way through.
When we moved to Chelsea we shopped in the local shops which, being at the wrong end of Kings Road, were fairly typical of the local shops in many towns. We had local greengrocers and butchers - and of course grocers - but there was not yet any sign of a supermarket. On the other hand, while I was at FCB, I visited a range of London supermarkets, buying samples of the goods on sale there. These were clearly identified then as being large supermarkets, which was why I visited them, but they would now be considered to be quite small ones - of the sort that you now have in many large villages. Even when we moved to Slough, where Pat shopped in the nearby village of Chalvey, again this was from small independent counter-service shops.
When we moved to Knutsford this was still a country town and the shops were once more local counter service shops. I believe there was one small supermarket, but I can't remember ever shopping there. Much the same was the case when we moved to Burton on Trent. It was a much larger town, and certainly must have had supermarkets somewhere, but we rarely went near one. Indeed, the main difference in Burton was that it had an indoor market. We used to shop there a lot, since there was a wide range of goods on the stalls, and prices were cheap.
What I'm saying is that, before the time when we moved to Molesey, we had not been unduly affected by the supermarket revolution. We still shopped in small independent shops where counter-service was the norm.
When we arrived at Molesey, however, this was a new estate and a small supermarket had been built as part of it. Accordingly we then did all our local shopping at this supermarket. It was a fairly conventional supermarket, but it was still only in the 5000 sq ft site range. Even so, it had a good counter service meat counter as well as everything else we needed. So, for more than the decade, this was where we did all our shopping. The only difference was that, being a relatively upmarket estate, it carried a wider range of luxury goods than normal. Our big thrill was to shop there for Christmas, ordering the turkey in advance, and working our way through all the luxurious specialties. Even better, there was also a greengrocer next to it where you could get good quality vegetables; which supermarkets did not handle as well in those days.
When we moved to Basingstoke, however, we used shop - for the first time - at a big Sainsbury supermarket. Although this was twenty years ago, it was pretty much like a modern store. Although it was in the suburbs, and we had to drive to it, it was quite large and carried a wide range of goods. We used to drive to it once a week, adopting the widespread change from daily to weekly shopping, typically on Saturday. We used to complete our day out by buying fish and chips, for our lunch, from the shop next door. The one difference in Basingstoke was that, in late summer, we also used to also pick our own fruit. For once, we had beautiful strawberries and raspberries fresh picked from the fields.
Ashford, in Middlessex, where we next moved to, was a relatively small town. It did, though, have a small supermarket -- very much like that in Molesey. Again, though, we also had a local greengrocer who provided us with very good range of vegetables.
By the time we
moved to
Milton Keynes, though, we found that this new ‘city’ was suburbia on the
grand scale. Although we now have
an
excellent Tesco Express on our doorstep (in fact just 40 yards across the road
from it) almost all our shopping was done then, and now, in the major
supermarkets. On the other hand, we actually preferred the smaller supermarket
in the centre of
Milton Keynes, owned by Waitrose, since it had a much better selection of
more exotic goods.
But, latterly, all our shopping has moved to the one location -- thelocal Tesco superstore. We almost exclusively use this - Tesco Extra – superstore, which has something like 50,000 square feet of floorspace, simply because it is the nearest store to us. They do have a reasonably wide range, though the extra size is mainly used to provide many more facings of the same product!
This hasn't cramped our style too much, since it carries pretty much the same range -- and probably even a better range -- than we were previously used to. But it is a shame that the small shops have disappeared from our life, and the excitement of those first discoveries in the South Kensington delicatessen has long since evaporated.
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