Shopping with Mother

Sometimes when I think about shopping with my mother

 it is as if I am cast back a hundred years.

We traipsed from shop to shop:

 chemist, butcher, greengrocer, 

baker, fishmonger, newsagent, grocer

with arms lengthening by the yard.

The chemist was exactly as Martin Armstrong describes

in his poem Miss Thompson Goes Shopping,for it had, 
'The tall, big bellied bottles three -

red, blue, and emerald, richly bright

Each with its burning core of light.'

high in the window.

And when you opened the door you were assailed

by 'the old strange fragrance...

A fragrance like the garden pink,

But tinged with vague medicinal stink

Of camphor, soap, new sponges, blent

With chloroform and violet scent.'

The butcher was a protracted visit involving two queues, 

one to wait for the meat to be hacked

 with a cleaver from the carcass,

the other to pay the woman at the barred cash desk.
You could entertain yourself with a little sawdust shuffling.

The greengrocer, more outdoors than in,

was chilly and boring,
who cared about carrots?

The baker offered an occasional chance to choose 
an anaemic white bun with a slick of white or pink icing.

The fondant peeled off like a tongue 
and it was tempting to eat it all in one go, 
but the rest of the bun was as dry as blotting paper without it.

If the greengrocer was cold then the fishmonger was glacial.

I hoped it wasn't to be kippers.

The newsagent was also the tobacconist and confectioners'.

One of my earliest errands was to fetch Red Rizla papers

for my father's roll ups. 

Goodness that man could smoke.

Pipes, chiefly, but the Rizla machine

was never far from his side.

If he ran out he would grudgingly accept 

one of my mother's cigarettes.

They didn't illustrate that in Shopping With Mother.

Sweets were bought on Sundays after church.

6d worth of pineapple chunks, flying saucers,

Fruit Gums, Fruit Pastilles, chocolate eclairs,

Spangles, Tiffin bars, Turkish Delight.

The grocer was sometimes O'Brien's down the road,

(although he would send the Monday telephoned order up

 with a boy called Michael on his bike) but usually 

it was Sainsbury's up the road in its original incarnation -

chin height marble counters and repeated queues

as you worked your way slowly round the mosaic tiled floor for

a slab of Cheddar, a box of Weetabix,

sliced ham, jam, washing powder.

We had no car to collapse into,
but a long wait for the trolley bus 

which did not drop us anywhere near our house.

I marvel at 'mother's' smiling face and sprightly step.

Her tiny basket must weigh a ton by now.

Shopping with Mother by M.E. Gagg
illustrated by J.H.Wingfield
for Ladybird Books 1958.