A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Shops and Banks
In the early 1950's there was only the Co-op - as near to the supermarkets of today as you could get. Not only did they do dividend stamps but they also delivered to your door. A service that the modern day supermarkets are just waking up to!
There was the Home and Colonial. All gold and green lettered and full of old-world charm where the smell of cheese and ham permeated the air tinged with herbs. They still patted your butter into square oblongs with wooden paddles.
Dickie Hoyle still delivered the milk to the restaurant in giant metal churns: a family-run dairy.
We had three banks, one on each corner, where the High Street crossed with William Street. There was the Westminster Bank(where my parents banked), Lloyds Bank, and The Midland. Still there, I'll warrant, though the groovy name for the Westminster Bank is of course the Nat West!
When my father ran our business into the ground with his gambling and drinking he was in no fit state, after his operation, to run the restaurant (in my opinion, knowing what I know now, he was in no fit state either way!). My mother took over. She did such a fine job turning the business round to profit and money in the bank, that our bank manager walked into the restaurantin person to congratulate her!
There was one business in Herne Bay that was at the very end of the High Street where it ran into Sea Street. It was called CORNFOOTS. Although it sounded much like a 'chemists', it sold high quality furniture, china and wot-not and was very nearly always empty – or so it seemed to us. Yet it survives to this day. I always thought that it was run by the Mafia, or the Krays. A relation of the Krays ran a pub in the Whitstable area. My imagination has a lot to answer for.
There was a bloke who ran an old radio shop also in Sea Street. I say radio shop. It wasn't one of those posh radio shops like Currys. Oh no. It was a place that was littered with old radio valves, coils, crystals for crystal sets, condensers, and tuners, aerials that went up in the loft. ETC. and the smell, the smell was of old dusty leather with just a touch of oil. It was run by this chap who seemed to be welded to a pile of valves, like a huge dragon that guards its treasure. There wasn't one radio that had not been raided for its parts.
He was like Dr Frankenstein only he, unlike Peter Cushing (the actor, who lived in Whitstable, just down the road from Herne Bay) was a huge man. He was unshaven and with that eternally brown, greasy trilby hat and equally greasy brown suit, so tight that it made the jowls of his considerably fat face, fall in layers. His teeth were brown with nicotine and he wheezed out his words. But his words fell in wisdom, wisdom on the subject that he loved: Radios. He was a walking, wheezing, encyclopaedia of radio trivia.
I had taken my crystal set apart and lost the crystal. I knew that if anywhere here was the place to replace it. Not only that but I could build my own crystal set better than my old one. 'The Fat Man' was able to find an old radio tuner and a new, more sensitive, crystal. And an ever better set of headphones! Oh, I was in heaven. I set to work with my dad's soldering iron, and the first voice I heard over the headphones was Alistair Cooke's LETTER FROM AMERICA. I have been listening to Alistair Cook ever since.
The Fat Man, when he could prise him self away from the seeming junk that made up his world, would sit astride a 50cc motor cycle, his huge bulk dwarfing its tiny frame like a small but willing horse with an overweight master. Where he lived no one knew. But I envisioned him in a small terraced house with a small back garden but with a HUGE shed. In that shed would be more valves, more chassis, more of everything, but the cream of everything.
I had a dream for the Fat Man, a dream that he was a Ham Radio expert with a finger in every country in the world, and from his wondrous shed sprouted an Ariel that would put even Broadcasting House to shame. For I had a dream for him, the Fat Man, a dream that extended far beyond his overweight self and all over the planet and beyond, where he would talk to presidents and kings and film stars and beings from outer space and the other side of galaxies, where the Fat Man shone!
But the Fat Man's shop was emptied and a small frozen foods firm took over. The Fat Man was still seen riding his small but unyielding bike around the streets of Herne Bay…but not for long. He, like the contents of his shop, disappeared and was never seen again.
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