There were lots of men that came knocking on the front door. It was amazing how many different services would be available direct to your door. Lots of people made a living by calling on you to offer a service. In the morning the milk was delivered to the door before you got up every day. The local dairy farmer would bottle the milk from his own cows and deliver it on a hand pulled cart. Mum had to leave a note in the empty bottles to tell him how many pints to leave. It was a problem if it rained as the ink would run and wash off the paper. He had his own bottling plant and he washed all the bottles in a great big steamer. The milk was really creamy and had real cream floating on the top. If you did not get it in to the house early enough on a winters morning it froze and forced the lid off. During the spring and summer the blue tits would peck through the foil to get at the cream if you did not leave a plastic pot to put over the bottles. He would call once a week on a Friday night after Dad had come home with his wages to collect for the milk.
Young boys would deliver newspapers before they went to school. I always wanted a paper round but was too young, you had to be thirteen to get a job. On a Sunday their bags would be twice as heavy and in the evenings of each week night they delivered the Liverpool echo.
On a Friday the fishmonger would call with his van of fresh fish from Fleetwood. He had cutting boards and scales in his van, the fish would be cleaned, filleted and wrapped in grease proof paper then in brown paper, all by hand for you to take it home. If you wanted it a bit cheaper you could take a plate or a dish out to the van and he would knock a penny or two off. Hankins butcher did the same twice a week with the fresh meat.
Sometimes the knife man would call with his grind stone mounted on the front of his bike. All the mums would bring their kitchen knives out to be reground to be sharp, he would also sharpen the hedge shears or the lawn mower blades.
All the houses had coal fires and at least twice a year the chimney would need sweeping. The sweep would call with his brushes on his bike and would put a sheet over the fire place and in the fire grate. In the sheet was a hole where he put the poles he attached to the brush. He pushed and pulled the brush up and down the chimney cleaning all the soot into a bag at the bottom. The bush would go all the way up to the top and when it came out the top you knew he had nearly finished. The soot would either be taken away or if you wanted you could have it in the garden for a fertiliser, this what my dad did. There was never any mess he cleaned up after himself and mum was really happy with the way he left the carpets with not a single mark on them.
The coal man would call once a week with great big one hundredweight sack of coal, Mum would get one bag of best coal and a bag of nutty slack. This would be carried from the wagon down the path to the back of the house where the coal bunker was. The bunker was a concrete box about four foot cube with a half wooden lid, the best coal was put in on one side and the nutty slack was put in on the other side. The best coal was to get the fire burning well and the slack was to back it up for the night, to slow down the burning so that it would last until morning. The coal man always wore a leather cap to protect his head and a bib on his back made of leather and with steel studs on it. The studs were so the coal sacks did not slide down his back when he lifted them. He would stand back to the wagon with slightly bent knees and reach over his shoulder to grab the top corners of the coal sacks. He then stood up straight, the sack seemed to float up and stick to his back, he could carry it for really long distances around the backs of the houses to their bunkers where with a deft flick the sack would land upside down in the bunker. He then pickled the sack up empty and went back to the lorry where he stacked the empty sacks under a 14lb weight. He could deliver two loads a day of 100 sacks easily.
“Rags and Bones, any old rags and bones” was a shout us kids loved as it meant the rag and bone man was about with his free gold fish or a balloon on a stick. If mum had any bits left from all the sewing she would give them to me to take out to him and I would get another goldfish for my bowl. He also took away any scrap iron or metal as well. He was on a big horse and cart, the horse looked like it was wearing a nappy as he caught all the horse muck so he could sell that to the gardeners too. I asked what he did with all the bones and dad said they went to the glue factory in Wigan. The cloth or rags were either recycled as clothes, went for felt making or went in to paper making. He would let me sit on the cart as he went round the estate and would drop me back at the corner near our house when he had finished the area.
The bakers van would call three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with not only fresh bread but cakes, scones and crumpets. My favourite was pikelets they were a thin type of crumpet that went really crispy when you toasted them. Lovely with real butter and honey on them.
There were even men that called with a great big suit case full of brushes and mop heads. He had all sorts for getting into little narrow places and long handled ones for places you could not reach. He even brought my mum one for cleaning her new venetian blinds. They were smashing you could see out and not be seen watching when they were set right. Mum got them when we got the telly first to stop the glare reflecting on the screen without having to close the curtains.
Every couple of weeks the window cleaner would call and ask for a clean bucket of warm water to do our windows. he never had any soap, just a cloth and a shammy leather, really it was chamois but everyone said shammy . He carried his ladder with him on his shoulder as he cycled all over the village. he did every window on the outside and would even do the inside if you wanted. Mum said no thanks to the inside being done, she did not want to be know like the woman from down the street. The window cleaners bike was always parked outside "her" house for ages and I never saw her curtains open while he was there.
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