Wandering Mind

Have you ever emerged from a pleasant reverie and questioned just what thought sequence had led you down that track?  I hesitate to call it old age, but this was my experience the other morning.  Try as I might, I can't recollect what it was in either St Peter's first Epistle, or my Bible notes, that triggered this diversion, but I found myself thinking of shops in Diss during my childhood, and the fact that the names above the windows rarely matched the people inside.

Take, for example, the one that I wrote about here at some length almost three years ago.  The shop was called W. Bale & Son, and I can just remember seeing the original William Bale, a short man with glasses, and also his son, another William (but always known as Billy), who had already retired when I worked in the shop in my schooldays.  By then it had been sold as a going concern to the firm who ran the wine merchants across the road, John Lovibond & Sons.

Before wine had come along, these premises were part of what I suppose had been a small deparment store, known as 'Bobby's'.  Here was the place to go for quality tailoring, but also for crockery and - I believe - furniture, too. One of the younger generation of the family was only a few years older than me, and I recall being in the store one day when someone came in to see him.  I recall my stifled amusement when the man behind the counter referred to him as 'Mr. James'; so far as I knew the boys at school just called him Jimmy Bobby!

Just across Market Hill from this store was a chemist's shop, with a great stone façade.  Carved into this, in the manner of a giant tombstone, was the name 'Gosling & Co.'  The man who ran this business was William Black, a tall man with grey hair.  I believe there was another man before him, a Mr. Fox, but of that I can't be sure.  I think the original proprietor Mr Gosling, died early in the century.  There was another chemist's shop on the opposite side of the block (which is now known for tourism purposes as the Heritage Triangle), called 'Batley & Stratton'.  I remember the front opened on to a narrow pavement, made even narrower by the existence of rails outside the window.  These were very useful for parking one's bicycle! Opposite this ancient store, with its double doors, so narrow that one could scarcely pass through if only one were open, was a rather shabby shopfront that was far from off-putting, in fact very attractive to young boys and girls.

The wider door of this shop opened into a broad room in which was a great table where, stacked in orderly manner, were all kinds of sweets, still in the boxes they had come in from the wholesaler.  On shelves behind were large jars of more sweets, to be pulled down and weighed out by the quarter-pound ... although if our pocket money was tight, it was no trouble to provide just two ounces if we wanted.  On the opposite side of the room was a display of pipes, cigarettes and tobacco, for the sign above the window - not that we ever looked at it, of course! - read 'Tobacconist and Confectioner'.  My memory isn't clear, but I think the name on this sign was Hurren, although the shop was run by a couple named Forsdyke.  Their advert in the parish magazine said 'AF & GB Forsdyke', anyway.  I suspect that the old lady who welcomed us to her sweet emporium may have been the daughter of the original Hurren, for my mother always referred to the shop as Hurren's, and to this lady as 'Miss Hurren', which would imply that at some point she had married a Mr G. Forsdyke.  Mr Forsdyke may have had another job, because he wasn't seen much in the shop.  My recollection of him is of a tall slim man, usually in a formal suit, who had an elegant way of holding his cigarettes from underneath.

Behind Batley & Stratton, was a wholesale grocers, where I was often sent on errands.  It was called Aldrich & Bryant, and just around the corner, beyond the Midland Bank, was the established firm of solicitors, Lyus, Burne and Lyus, always known locally as Lyus & Burne.  I think both Lyuses had long since departed this life, but Dick Burne was still around in those days, a regular communicant at the early service at the parish church, and his wife was a customer at Bales'.

Like Batley & Stratton and Aldrich & Bryant, many of the other shops and businesses in the town probably began as partnerships, such as the ironmongers, Larter & Ford, whose premises ran down to the Mere, a six-acre lake around which the old town grew up.  Then at the apex of the triangle was another clothing business, Aldiss & Hastings.  I'm sure each of these businesses catered for their own sector of society, for there seemed ever to be a sort of 'us and them' distinction into which I grew up.  So, for our clothing needs, my father - and I in his wake - would go to another shop where the name didn't fit the proprietor, Cullens, managed by Mr Alan Bailey, a very helpful man who lived on the same estate as us, and who spoke with a lisp.

And finally to mention a business that I had no dealings with, a partnership that made its fortune from that noisy invention, the motor car.  Mr. Watson and Mr. Smith owned the showroom that eventually became the town's Vauxhall dealer, and - possibly in common with others in the town's history - invested their profits in the erection of houses.  This pair of substantial semi-detached houses were called Cherwell Croft and Willow Brae, and stood only a little way back from that prestigious entrance to the town, Victoria Road.  I have a vague recollection of the two widows, Mrs Smith being a tall lady, and Mrs Watson considerably shorter, and having a mouth always on the go ... by which I don't mean to suggest that she was a gossip, rather that she suffered from a nervous twitch.  By the time I knew her, she had moved to a bungalow next door to the original houses, and it was into a flat in one of these houses - I never knew who had owned which - that I moved with my bride when first married.

All this goes to show what an uninteresting week it has been, work-wise. Although not particularly unproductive, the only day that was really full nose-to-tail was yesterday, which brought four of the week's thirteen jobs. The other days tended to stagger to a close - rather than end - mid-afternoon, and Thursday began late, because I had to resort to the van-doctor when I was threatened by that most sinister of icons in the modern vehicle, the picture of the car partly obliterated by a giant spanner!  In this case the diagnosis was straightforward - replacement of glow-plugs required, but it does disrupt the flow of the week.