{"id":499,"date":"2017-05-11T19:23:55","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brandonheritage.org.uk\/?p=499"},"modified":"2017-05-11T19:23:55","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:23:55","slug":"499-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/?p=499","title":{"rendered":"Home deliveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cherry Rogers remembers a time when deliveries to your door were common place.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For our grandparents and parents, ordering your shopping and having it delivered was quite normal.\u00a0 The internet was non-existent but almost everything could be delivered to the door.<\/p>\n

I can remember the knife grinder coming round.\u00a0 He came once a year on a bike which, when he pedalled, could turn the grinding wheel.\u00a0 Nana always had the scissors, the shears, the sheep shears and the lawn mower blades all sharpened and re-set ready for the lawn mowing and grave trimming season.\u00a0 Graves were done once a fortnight.<\/p>\n

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Delivery truck on London Road<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tag Elmer<\/span> delivered milk from a churn on his bike, dispensing milk from measures which hung on the churn.\u00a0 His name was Taggart Somme.\u00a0 He and his brother Don<\/span> and sister May<\/span> lived at Mill Hill, with the dairy (or rather cows, a shed, bucket and a milk churn) were at the bottom end of the Santon Downham road, near the Paddocks.\u00a0 He delivered twice a day, when the cows were milked I guess, and they had no way of chilling the milk.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have our milk from him, we had ours from the Holmwood Dairy just up the road from us.\u00a0 Bill Root<\/span> delivered our milk.\u00a0 The dairy was owned and run by Mr and Mrs Lindsey<\/span>.\u00a0 Mum said you had to boil the milk from Tag to kill the bacteria as it wasn\u2019t pasteurised and she didn\u2019t like the taste of boiled milk in her tea or coffee.<\/p>\n

Mr. Drury came round with vegetables and he had a horse and cart.\u00a0 When he had bananas for the first time after the war, my late friend Ivy Brand\u2019s mum rushed out and bought one so that Ivy could taste it.\u00a0 They had told her about bananas but she had never had one.\u00a0 They peeled it and her mum, dad and nana gathered round her to watch her eat it.\u00a0 She took one bite and burst into tears!\u00a0 She thought it would be juicy like an orange and she never ate a banana again as far as I remember.<\/p>\n

We had all the usual things delivered – coal, bread, meat, groceries, wines and beers; you went to the shop with the list or sent someone (always me for nana and mum).\u00a0 Or if you were one of the few you could telephone, your shopping would be delivered after school by a boy on a heavy trade bike.\u00a0 Mr Bond<\/span> from Thetford Road came round in a van with wet fish and shellfish, and you could buy shellfish from Mr. Clarke<\/span> at the Flowerpot on a Saturday.<\/p>\n

Later we had the co-op mobile, also Mr Nurse<\/span> with fruit and vegetables.\u00a0 The fish and chip van on Friday, which was Snushalls from Mildenhall.\u00a0 Health and safety at its best!\u00a0 Driving around with a couple of pans of boiling beef dripping, but good fish and chips.\u00a0 Tempers used to flare on a Friday if the chip van was late.\u00a0 We were sat there with our bread and butter and plates hot waiting for your dinner.\u00a0 We had the Corona lorry and Bestyett – nana had two bottles of corona, ginger beer and lemonade.\u00a0 We had Peters ice cream and Bumshi\u2019s.\u00a0 Mum wouldn\u2019t let me have Bumshi\u2019s, she said it sounded nasty.\u00a0 My mum was funny.<\/p>\n

One of my favourite deliveries was Sappa from Northgate Street in Bury.\u00a0 They delivered chicken meal and corn, and collected any spare eggs to distribute, but they also delivered day old chicks.\u00a0 I used to get excited if chicks were coming.\u00a0 They came in quite small boxes square, but inside the corners were rounded so that the chicks couldn\u2019t get squashed in the corners.\u00a0 I loved the sound the chicks made in those boxes.\u00a0 My dad or grandad took them up to one of the sheds, made a little enclosure with a small heat lamp and tipped the chicks out of the boxes.\u00a0 I loved them they rushed about like little clockwork things, chirping and squeaking continuously.\u00a0 A lot of noise for such small things.<\/p>\n

When I started work, we still could buy things and have them delivered.\u00a0 Travelling salesmen came to the office on a regular basis, some were our usual suppliers for ironmongery, creosote, oil and petrol.\u00a0 Also people who sold electrical goods so we could buy a cooker or something a bit cheaper through the company.\u00a0 I bought my cooker and kettle etc. that way when I got married.\u00a0 One day a salesman came selling jackets, gabardine things in browns and greens, just right to slip on for running up the yard or biking to work.\u00a0 They were horrible really but if one of us bought one the others would too.\u00a0 We all stood outside fitting on the jackets and I remember Geoff Southgate<\/span> putting one on and he put his hands in the pockets, there was a terrible ripping noise, and we looked at each other.\u00a0 Geoff pursed his lips and stared at the man.\u00a0 The salesman said \u201c Yes they do relax a bit when they are new\u201d.\u00a0 I cried with laughing.<\/p>\n

With all these people to deliver and of course my dad\u2019s adventures into the world of buying from the newspaper, I don\u2019t think we really needed the internet as we got on quite well.\u00a0 It was cheaper, quicker and much more fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cherry Rogers remembers a time when deliveries to your door were common place. For our grandparents and parents, ordering your shopping and having it delivered was quite normal.\u00a0 The internet was non-existent but almost everything could be delivered to the door. I can remember the knife grinder coming round.\u00a0 He came once a year on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[104,127,168,210,248,256,273],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memories","tag-cherry-rogers","tag-deliveries","tag-holmwood-dairy","tag-mill-hill","tag-salesmen","tag-shopping","tag-tag-elmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}