The Village Shop

A Memory of Ealand.

One of my fondest memories of my childhood visits to Ealand was visiting the village shop, which stocked a wide variety of goods and was owned by two sisters, Miss Gertie and Miss Laura Sales. Miss Gertie was in charge of the shop and when I called in the shop soon after arriving in the village by train from Manchester via Doncaster, if there were other customers on the premises, Miss Sales would proclaim, "This young lady has come all the way from Manchester!" She made it sound as though it was a million miles away! When I was on duty as 'drinks supplier' to the farm workers, I would stock up with several bottles of Tizer in the morning and we would take them down to the fields, known as The Warpings, on the tractor. During the day, I would replenish the stocks of drinks and collect the empty bottles. In those days, customers received 1 penny (pre-decimalisation coinage) when they returned one empty bottle to the shop so I would store up a sufficient number of empty bottles to make sure that I had sufficent money due back at the end of the day to entitle me to receive a bottle of Tizer free of charge. This system worked very well for me, but one day it turned out differently. I presented Miss Gertie with my empty bottles and checked with her that would be entitled to take out a free bottle of Tizer only to be told, "I'm sorry Susan, but you have bought all my stock of red Tizer and so I only have the white Tizer left, would you like a bottle of that?". "Oh yes, thank you very much!" I exclaimed, thinking that I was about to receive something that was excitingly different from any drink we had tasted before. I ran back to Auntie's and putting the bottle down on the table, I announced that I had brought everyone some White Tizer. The drinks were duly poured out and when I tasted it I must confess to be rather disapointed to find that it was only plain lemonade! Miss Gertie Sales certainly was an excellent saleswoman!

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