A Day in the Life of a Village Shopkeeper

Quite a tipple

Dealing with the public could be as trying as it was fulfilling particularly as many of our customers were old people with diminishing faculties…… like Mrs. Cauldron, an old woman in her eighties who was buying her daily bottle of sherry one morning when her daughter came in.  

“At the sherry again, mother,” the daughter said and the old woman jumped.

“What’s it to do with you?” she asked venomously. “Anyway, it’s not alcoholic.”

When Mrs. Cauldron had gone, the daughter asked if we’d mind not selling her mother sherry. “It’s not that I begrudge it her,” she explained. “It’s just that when I come home I can’t get any sense out of her. She’s three sheets to the wind.”

When I suggested that it might be difficult to say no to Mrs. Cauldron who was a very strong-willed woman, she pointed to a grape drink called Shloer. “Give her a bottle of that. She won’t know the difference.”

So the next time Mrs. Cauldron asked for sherry, I did as her daughter suggested. A lorry driver standing behind her looked hard at me and I knew exactly what he was thinking. “Village shopkeeper taking advantage of an old lady. Giving her Shloer and charging her for sherry. Cut their grannies throats for a fiver these jokers.” But with Mrs. Cauldron happily deceived according to her daughter’s wishes, I could hardly disabuse him. So are lies circulated and myths established.

Anyway, off went Mrs. Cauldron with her bottle of Shloer and when I next saw her daughter I asked how our little subterfuge was going.

“Terrible,” she said. “She finishes the Shloer then goes to the pub.”

 

They can’t really help it

“Watch it,” Joyce whispered to me later the same morning. “Cordelia's just put three pairs of tights in her bag.”

Not that Cordelia was an inveterate shoplifter. It was just that her mind had started to go. Sadly it was the beginning of Alzheimer’s. Cordelia had come to live with her son about a mile outside Poulton and even when her illness was quite advanced, she remained a delightful woman and came to the shop every day with her carer. After a time her son became concerned about her account, both its size and the items on it. He was amazed, one day, to see that his ageing mother was buying Tampax. But it was the daily bottle of whisky that really worried him. “She drinks it like water” he explained. “Give her a bottle of wine instead. It’s cheaper and won’t do her as much harm. And,” (shades of Mrs. Cauldron’s daughter) “she’ll never know the difference.”

When it became apparent that she did know the difference, refusing to accept wine while we had whisky on the shelves, he hit on another ruse.

“When you see her coming, hide all the whisky. Tell her you’re out of stock.”

So that’s what we did. The next time the carer’s car drew up, we quickly whipped all the whisky to the back of the shop out of sight. Cordelia came in, her usual charming self, and asked for her regular bottle. When we said we were out of stock, her smile faded and a steely glint came into her eyes. “That’s funny’ she said, “you had such a lot yesterday. Are you sure you’re not hiding it.”

Like Mrs Cauldron she wasn’t to be fooled. Old people may lose many of their faculties but the faculty to track down booze isn’t one of them. When it comes to alcohol they change from absentminded old shufflers into human lie detectors spotting the merest hint of dissemblance like supercharged Miss Marples.

As Cordelia’s disease worsened, we had to keep a constant eye on her as she wandered round the shop slipping various items into her bag. On the day in question I wrote down the other things in her basket and then I asked if she had any tights.

“Of course I have tights,” she barked.

I asked if I could see them.

“What here?” she queried. ‘Oh very well” and smiling sweetly she lifted up her skirt. I hastily explained that those weren’t the tights I had in mind, left the others in her bag and marked down three pairs anyway. Why had no one mentioned such matters before we came into this business? Dealing with demented old ladies had never been discussed at the various seminars we attended.

 

“Two rashers of bacon.”

I looked into the sour face of Mrs. Beech peering over the counter and steeled myself for a lengthy transaction. Harold had warned me that Mrs. Beech’s two rashers of bacon were one of the trials of the week but I thought he must have been exaggerating. Two rashers of bacon were after all – two rashers of bacon.

To most people perhaps, but not to Mrs. Beech. She drew distinctions between rashers with the subtlety that Greenlanders reserve for different types of snow.  The line between too much fat and too little fat was a fine one and easily crossed by anyone not well-versed in the intricacies of the subject and planeloads of bacon could have been dispatched to the starving millions while I tried to find two suitable rashers.  The first two I weighed she declared unacceptable.

“Too much fat,” she said hardly giving them a glance. I put them back in the fridge and weighed two more.

“Too heavy,” she barked. “It’ll cost the earth.”

I weighed a further two, which she grudgingly accepted – until I told her the price.

“This bacon is much dearer than when the Prescott’s were here.”

I gritted my teeth and explained that the bacon prices hadn’t changed.

“Well I don’t know. It seems impossible to get two decent rashers of bacon in this shop anymore. I suppose I’d better have the first two you showed me.”

Smiling fixedly, I was trying to remember which the first two were when Lizzie emerged from the house. Mrs. Beech looked at her.

“You’re not going out, are you?”

Lizzie said she was, whereupon Mrs. Beech shook her head and jerked her thumb in my direction.

“I wouldn’t be happy leaving him in charge.”

On my knees, trying to find two acceptable rashers of bacon from a selection that all looked the same, I came within an ace of wrapping every single rasher round Mrs. Beech’s head.

I’d finally dispatched Mrs. Beech, still muttering about the price of her two rashers and how shop keeping standards had fallen, when to my horror I saw Miss Cocker shuffling towards the shop.

 

An unpleasant smell

Miss Cocker was the most charismatic of all our customers though perhaps charismatic isn’t quite the word I want. She certainly had her own aura but it was hardly the kind to inspire or enchant. 

Quite simply Miss Cocker stank to high heaven. And this wasn’t an intermittent she’s-been-eating-garlic or she-hasn’t-washed-his-armpits smell. This was a smell that all the rosewater baths in the world couldn’t get rid of, a straight-through-the-skin-down-to-the- bones smell, the result of living in a small cottage with an assortment of dogs that had been allowed to foul the place for as long as anyone could remember. The smell as in her clothes, in her flesh, in her person. There was a pathos about the fact that she always applied a little rouge, a little lipstick and seemed oblivious to the effect she had on people. When she’d left, the smell remained and we used to dread an environmental health officer following her into the shop. He would never have believed the smell wasn’t an intrinsic part of the establishment and who could blame him?  The local builder, Frank Pitt, was the only person who ever entered her house and his devotion went way beyond the call of duty. She’d phone to say she’d fallen out of bed; Frank would go and pick her up. She wanted her toilet seat changed; Frank would change it and take on sundry other mouth-watering assignments. Light bulbs, television repairs, plumbing problems, Frank waded-in where others (including ourselves) feared to tread and came back with stories of living conditions that would have disgraced a pigsty. 

But no one else would go near the place. A friend who Frank asked to repair Miss Cocker’s TV set almost passed out as he entered. He whipped the TV away and gave it to Frank to return. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to me again,” he said.

I went in only once, when Miss Cocker was in hospital and Frank and his boys had been cleaning up. They’d been working for several days yet the place still looked unfit for human habitation.

“I see what you mean about the smell,” I said, screwing up my nose.

 “What do you mean? Frank said. “The place has been fumigated. The smell’s gone!”

So even on the best of days, the sight of Miss Cocker entering the shop wasn’t particularly welcome and this was definitely not the best of days. I usually bolted into the house and left Lizzie or Joyce to cope, but Lizzie was out and Joyce had gone home. I took a deep breath and wondered how long I could hold it. I felt distinctly uncharitable particularly as in other ways Miss Cocker wasn’t at all a difficult customer. Friendly and amusing, she would chat intelligently about this and that even at times assuming a somewhat flirtatious air, though that line of thought really is too dreadful to contemplate.

Anyway, as she entered I beat a hasty retreat into the post office and stayed there until she’d left maintaining just enough contact to hand over her pension. Call me a coward if you like (in fact I don’t know what else you’d call me) but after Mrs. Cauldron, Cordelia and Mrs Beech, dealing with Miss Cocker was very nearly the last straw.

 

Mr Angry

Then to put the tin hat on a perfect day, that nice Mr. Minnow came in with his post. He always cut it fine but today he came in even later than usual with his disarming smile and two large parcels to post to his son who was with the army in Germany. The postman explained that as it was already half-past five he couldn’t wait for the parcels to be processed and made as if to leave.

So much for our pleasant, benign customer. The genie of rage exploded from the bottle with a vengeance. No more Mr. Nice Guy – Mr Minnow started ranting like a man possessed – cursing the "wasters" at the Post Office who were "always on strike", who wouldn't put themselves out for "our boys overseas"- and more and more of the same ilk.

 “Hang on,” I thought. “We’re talking Germany not the Congo, and Germany l986 was hardly Germany l940. And “our boys” weren’t conscripts but professional soldiers, in the army by choice.”

He raged round the shop, frightening off other customers and behaving in such an aggressive way towards the postman that I eventually asked him to stop. At this he turned on me with his fists raised and accused me of being a joke and not taking either the job or “our boys” seriously.

Just then, one of our deliverymen came in, six foot six and built like the proverbial outhouse.

“Need any help?” he asked with a hint of menace, and Mr Minnow, seeing the two of us towering over him, didn’t fancy the odds. He stormed out taking his parcels with him and we never saw him again.

Minutes later I closed the shop and sank wearily into a chair, sorely tempted to take a leaf out of Mrs. Cauldron’s book and pop up to the pub for a large sherry.  How difficult it was on a day like I’d just experienced to abide by the age-old dictum that the customer is always right.