Shopping with your parents

[Marine Boy]

In the very early '70s, we had a couple of trips to the West End. I loved all the huge department stores and I clearly recall the lifts at Selfridges, Oxford Street. Inside, the walls were chromed/mirrored and there was an elderly lift operator sitting on a stool. The lift would stop very suddenly with a jerk at each floor and he would say, very wearily, "Bend your knees..." (Yeah, I know it sounds like a 1940s anecdote, but it was the 70s, honest.)

Then there was the Bentals in Kingston with the great toy department. Loved that! And our local supermarket, the Home & Colonial, where we did the weekly grocery shopping. Didn't like that.

Anyone have any memories of shopping with their parents, either in their local town/village or travelling to the big stores in the city?

[sixtyten]

Re: Shopping with your parents

We used to do the annual trip to London (on a bus!) Took ages to get there, but lucklily we were not that far from London

[Marine Boy]

Re: Shopping with your parents

We used to do the annual trip to London (on a bus!) Took ages to get there, but lucklily we were not that far from London

Until 1967 I was in Dulwich, but after that, the family were in Surrey so our journeys into London took longer.

Do you recall particular shops you went to, sixtyten?

[Richard1978]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I can remember my Mum taking me & my brother & sister around Stockport shopping in the school holidays.

Sometimes things could get boring, as my Mum often insists at trying a lot of things before making up her mind.

This isn't just with clothes, once in Sainsbury's she looked at almost every frozen chicken in the shop before deciding. She was trying to get one a certain size as we had visitors.

My girlfriend though that was really amusing when I told her about it.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I used to go shopping with my mam in Newcastle. It was always a bitter-sweet experience. My priorities: 1. Go to Fenwick's toy department and hopefully get bought something. 2. Go to Sarah's cafe and have sausage and chips on a cartoon paper plate with a coke. 3. Go and climb on 'the pencils' for a bit. 4. Find a nice bit of carpet somewhere to lie about on because I'm feeling tired and bored. 5. Go home on the top deck of the bus and have a snooze en route. My mam's priority: Trapse around Marks and Spencer's for about 1000 years.

[stuckinthe80's]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I also used to go to Newcastle shopping with my mam. We used to get the double decker bus from the town I lived in (OK buses service 724!). We always went to Fenwick's and M&S and John Lewis and the huge Boots in Eldon Square. Christmas was the best cos I used to be so excited to see Fenwick's window. It was always magical and i'd stand staring at it for ages. In the mid 80's there used to be a Hamley's on Northumberland Street and that was great!!! We also went to Sarah's Cafe like you Trickyvee!

[Trickyvee]

Re: Shopping with your parents

Ha ha, I wondered if anyone on DYR would know what I was going on about! Fantastic. Yes Fenwick's window...an all time classic. I used to think it was the entire length of Northumbland street when I was little. It seemed huge. Can you remember Fenwick's long-standing Santa? An old guy with a real long white beard! He was there for years. I'm still convinced he was the real thing!

[Jacqueline]

Re: Shopping with your parents

Just before Christmas Mum used to take my brother and me into Birmingham to see Father Christmas in the toy department of Lewis'. The queue was always horrendously long, the bus journey was very stop and start and inevitably one of us (not Mum) would feel sick on the way there. :cry:

The only other regular shopping expedition was towards the end of the school summer holidays when we had to go and get new school uniform. Why do kids get into trouble for growing?

[AmethystWitch]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I used to live in London when I was about 5/6 ish, I remember when my mum took me shopping, the amount of people on the street!! She'd hold my hand so tight and I was soo scared of the homeless people! but when we got to Hamleys, all of that fear and doubt just washed away! lol it was like the biggest toy store I'd seen and everything was so pretty!! lol

[darren]

Re: Shopping with your parents

MY mum used to take me to the local shopping centre on the bus sometimes a double decker.
its about 3 or 4 miles from home.

there where just so many shops at the shopping centre.
there where sweet shops,diy shops,book shops etc.

as a kid i could not believe how big it was.
at christmas when we went i got to sit on santas knee and get mty picture taken.

[Sly]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I used to go shopping with my mam in Newcastle. My mam's priority: Trapse around Marks and Spencer's for about 1000 years.

Oh god, this a million times over. I don't really have time to reminisce about shopping, but if I get reminded or see this thread later on I'll do another post.

[shilton dipper]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I remember going to the local shops with my mum when I was about 4...........I had a pink shopping trolley and I always carried something home, like the butter.........if I was lucky I had a ride on the Bambi outside the co-op. I remember buying the bread from a small circular shop and when I was about 13 I would have a custard slice for elevenses in the school holidays......when I was 13/14 my job every morning was to go and buy the paper.

At weekends my family either went to Oxford or Swindon for the big shops..........hated that, except when we could have lunch in one of the big store restaurants.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Shopping with your parents

.....if I was lucky I had a ride on the Bambi outside the co-op.

Off topic but recently I saw a modern Trumpton fire engine kid's ride outside a shop and thought it was an unusual choice in this day and age. It played the Trumpton music and my two friends (in their 20's) didn't have a clue what it or the jaunty music was from. I, of course, did and took delight in explaining all like some aged oracle.

[Sly]

Re: Shopping with your parents

OK, I'm back. This will be a long post. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Through my time as a child, I've been subjected to shopping a lot, an when I say that, I really mean it. I'm talking about between 5 or 10 hours a week minimum. As a child, that's a lot of hours.

The weekly food shop was something I didn't mind as a kid, mainly because I knew I'd get something bought for me. Normally something sweet or novelty, or a LEGO model. In fact, I got bought so much LEGO that as the weeks passed that the models got increasingly expensive until I was getting the £10 to £20 model sets instead of the cheapest models. Because we used to go at exactly the same time every week, you could bet that there were other people that we made friends with because they were doing the same thing. Afterwards we'd go to a little take away and order Italian food, which mainly compromised of pizzas. In fact, I don't think I've had such good pizza since, the pizza from this place was super deluxe. As a child they also introduced me into eating chilli con carne, which come as a pizza topping. You could either have garlic or chilli con carne. I'd go for the chilli every single time.

On the Saturday my family (women) members would decide to go into the city to shop. In fact, it was very little that the decided against going out, even if the weather outside was lethal. Here I never got to go in the shops I wanted to go in, and every minute would seem like hours and hours. As a young boy I've spent more hours in C&A, BHS, M&S, Boots, Argos and a myriad of other shops that should have permanently damaged my psyche. In the summer it was always blazing hot, lethargy set in approximately 10 minutes after getting off the bus and it lasted until I got home. In the winter it was the exact opposite, it was as cold as it could possibly get, unless you went in a store where they had the heating cranked up. As soon as you walked through the door it made you instantly tired.

Of course, Christmas was a whole other bag. There was stuff to keep me occupied back then, although the cold/heat combo combined with the mass crowds was something I still don't really like in big doses. I love the bustle atmosphere you get when it leads up to Christmas, I actually went into the cities in the latter shopping days to soak it up. Not for long though, that would be stressful.

In contraswt, going shopping with my Dad was amazing. Everything I learnt about shopping I learnt from him. Look around, see what you like, do a price comparison and buy. No loitering and messing about. Get it. See what you want. Price compare. Buy. Done. This is the way shopping should be. Live it like your carparking is about to run out. Straight and to the point.

Sometimes in the summer the ladies of the family would decide to go shopping elsewhere. This meant that we'd have to take several buses and trains to the destination. This was always the best part of the day. When we arrived at where ever we were going to, it was always the same bloody shops, catalogue shops and stores we normally went to anywhere. I used to like going to Huddersfield because the cafe we went to in there had arcade machines of some rally game and Street Fighter II. I never got to play on them, but it was fun to watch. This cafe also did these massive saucer sized chocolate chip cookies. I seem to remember we had one of these cafes in my local city but it is no longer there now.

Pre-post edit: I just did a bit of research and it appears the Four Cousins is still in Huddersfield. There was one in Leeds but I am unsure if it closed up shop or moved premises, it used to be in a walk through arcade, but the arcade was boarded up quite some time ago. Whether there remains to be a Four Cousins in Leeds remains a mystery to me.

The other shopping that used to be done was in the school holidays. These combined the usual Saturday special outing to wherever, but normally involved town hopping between Morley, Dewsbury and Batley. These would be a mix of casual milling about shopping and food shopping.

The other shopping trip would be the Grandma pop-shop. This would involve a walk through baking hot sun pulling a stupid frigging trolley filled with those string bags to a litte arcade that had a few independant shops along with a shoe shop and all that other stuff. The walk there would have my Mum and Gran singing "P-p-p-presto!" over and over which was meant to entertain me, but just ended up winding me up. Presto was the name of the Co-op. If I was lucky my mum would buy me a set jelly from Presto.

I seriously hate shopping like this. Although saying that, there's not a woman I've had a relationship that been able to drive me insane with their shopping habits, simply because I am already a battle hardened shopper. I've perfected the skill of just following whoever I am meant to be following and shutting down all other major system that allow me to think outside of hurting feet, hunger or needing a toilet break.

So yeah, shopping. Ultimate shopping. It made me the man I am today. A bitter twisted human being who can turn into a drone when needed due to excessive exposure to shopping as a lad.

[stud1al]

Re: Shopping with your parents

I remember that more than once i waited outside while mum tried dresses on. About an hour later she'd come out and say she didn't like any of them