After we moved back to Burscough, Jack Fryer offered me work with Carless and Horton at their Skelmersdale shop. I had to cycle the seven miles there and back every day. I would go down school lane, past St John’s school where I had gone as a very young boy, under the railway bridge and over the canal. I went past the Ring O Bells, up to the garage, past Lathom park chapel to Spa lane. I went down to Firswood road and then across the farm track past the pond to School lane which led on to the high street where the shop was. This was before the new town had been built in with Old Skemersdale. Plenty of houses had been built in Digmoor and Tanhouse but not in New church farm which still stood as a farm then. It was warehouse work, shop assistant and paid me £9.10/-d for a five and a half day week.
A few months later he said I could work in the Liverpool head office. This was in Woodhams Wine Mart in Hanover Street just down the road from Paradise Street. Today it is where the Liverpool 1 shopping centre is built. I would have to get a train from Burscough to Liverpool every day, I knew what this entailed because of my skiving school the year before. I would leave my bike in the garden of the empty house next to the railway station. I always locked it to the railings so I was very surprised one night when it was missing. I found a note saying that the police had removed it at the owners request. I went down to the police station and had to prove it was mine before I could get it back. New people had bought the house and I did not realise.
The journey into Liverpool took about forty minutes and when I got off I had a fifteen minute walk across Liverpool to get to the warehouse. I came out of the front of Exchange station and down Moorfields to Tithebarn Street. On Moorfields was the joke shop where you could get stink bombs or invisible ink. Down Stanley street past the post office and in to Williamsons square. I liked to look in to the window of Hessys music shop and see all the drum sets and guitars for sale.
I passed Coopers where the smells reminded me of Daishes shop in Ormskirk with the smell of fresh coffee beans roasting and bacon sides hanging before slicing. I walked down the back alley behind Coopers where the warehouses were four storeys high and all with great big doors on each floor where the pulleys used to lift the good up to. Across the road at the end of the alley was Woodhams. It was four storeys above ground and one cellar. The shop was up four steps and set in the ground floor. The cellar was where all the stock was kept. I worked with another young lad Kevin and a older man Bill. We had a room set up on the top floor as canteen and under this was the offices for the business.
They had over twenty shops all over Liverpool and the surrounding area. My job was to go with Mr Fryer and help him set up the new delicatessen shop in the off licence stores.
While I was doing this at one store in Childwall I met a girl who worked part time in the shop and started going out with her. I would catch the bus out to her house after work some nights and we would go out to the pictures or to the pub even though we were under age. I stopped over at hers some times and she came to Burscough to meet Mum and my brothers too. It came to her seventeenth birthday and she had a party at her house, her parents had gone away for a few days so the party went on all night virtually. I crashed out at about four am and found an empty armchair to sleep in. There were people everywhere, at about six in the morning, I woke up with a thirst and went into the kitchen. There I found my girl friend stark naked on the floor with another lad making love.
I got a glass of water and said “ don’t mind me, carry on” and left the room. I went to back into the living room and went back to sleep and woke up later in the morning. Nothing was said and I got a lift with her down to the station to catch the train home. As we walked up to the ticket gate I turned to her and said “I don’t think I will be coming back again, do you?”. She just turned and ran off crying, I never saw her again.
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