Advent Day Ten

Hello Friends!

You cannot make it up.  We are nowhere near having recovered from Storm Darragh than we now find ourselves last evening under a stay indoors advisory {not that anyone would want to be out in this unless they had no choice} with doors and windows shut tight because the local Dowrog Common on the outskirts is ablaze and the Fire Brigade are in attendance.  It has been brought under control, but honestly, you couldn't make it up.

Yesterday, a fellow blogger did a lovely post on pop up Christmas shops.  It triggered a memory shared to me by my mother, and pop up shops might not be the twenty first century phenomenon we think they are!  I'm going to take you back several decades now to before I was born.

There is an old building in the High Street currently called The Really Wild Emporium in its current incarnation, but previously it has been many things including a pasta cafe and a grocery shop.  Let's go back to the time it was called City Bakery, owned by the Nash family.  It was, as the name suggests, a bakery, Mr Nash was a master baker of some considerable skill.  It was also a general grocery shop, and in the 1940's my mother was a shop girl at City Bakery.  She left school in 1942 at age fourteen as you could do then, and she secured employment from Mr Nash.
{if you opt to follow the above link, go to their FB or Insta page to see photos of the frontage which is really quite lovely}

My mother often told me of Christmas at City Bakery.  Not so much about the actual shop, which was Mr Nash's domain, but the upstairs hallway and front room that overlooked the High Street.  That was the domain of Mrs Nash and it was transformed before Christmas into what we would today call a pop-up shop.  

Now, you must remember that this was in the days that predate the highly commercialised state of Christmas that prevails today when Christmas can begin appearing in the shops in September or earlier.  This was 1940's Britain.  It was partly during World War II and after when rationing prevailed.  Yet at the end of November the transformation happened when the hallway was decked out for Christmas and which led you along to the sitting room above the shop which Mrs Nash transformed into a Winter Wonderland of Christmas gifts and fripperies within the confines that rationing allowed.  

There were dolls, teddies, wooden train sets and books, colouring books, crayons and paint, French knitting sets, embroidery sets, boxed handkerchiefs and oh! so much more to delight the children. As rationing lifted, tins of biscuits, sweets and chocolates, Turkish Delight and other goodies made their appearance.  Shoppers were invited and enticed to step upstairs to the Christmas Emporium and pick whatever treats they could afford and their heart's desire.  It was a magic wonderland of joy and excitement for children and adults alike.  Orders were placed and deposits taken, and the long wait until Christmas Day began!  It was a very different way of doing business back then.  

A few of you have said you are amazed at my recall, well it's the way it is, I have always had an eye for detail and I guess it's showing up here. I do enjoy story telling and by regularly visiting certain memories it is a way of keeping them alive, not allowing them to fade into obscurity.   I do know I often speak of things, long forgotten, and the listeners will say, "Goodness, yes, why we'd forgotten all about that!" Then I take them along the trip down Memory Lane.

Until tomorrow . . .