I quickly learnt how to bone and roll bacon and ham, Jack Fryer taught me how to butcher beef for roasting even though most of the beef came in ready jointed. I had to learn how to operate an industrial oven, it had two oven one above the other and was about four feet square internally. You could fit eight normal roasting tins in each oven and I could cook twice a day, one lot in the morning and one lot in the afternoon. I would bone and roll the afternoon roast in the morning and the next morning roast in the afternoon. With twenty shops to supply I was kept busy working six full days a week.
If I had any free time I was asked to work in the shop. There were three other ladies and a young girl I remember in the shop. Betty was a tall silver haired German lady, like the manageress Giavanna she had married an English soldier after the war. Jenny was and old liverpudlian lady and she was very kind to me. There was a big lady who’s name I forget but she was never wrong and no matter what I tried to show her about how the shop was to be run she had her own better way. The youngest was Sarah who stared like me straight form school. She was bullied terribly by the older women and got all the dirty and hard jobs like mopping the floor or cleaning the fridges out. I had to order all the stock for my kitchen and keep the stock rotating so that the oldest was used first. I was responsible for the cleanliness of the kitchen and this was certified every year by the council environmental health department. I never failed one examination with the council.
In February1971 we had to change all the currency we used over to decimal coins. Everyone was dreading the change but I found it very easy. All the tills had to be in the new currency and the scales all had to have new weight charts to convert the old prices to the new ones.. All the prices had to be in both pounds, shillings and pence and the pounds and new pence. It meant that the older staff were confused at times. I thought that the staff that had grown up on the continent with decimal systems would find it easy but no they were as confused as everyone else. It was easy at 5p to a shilling and 100 pence to the pound. If a price of a bottle of sherry was 12/6d it now became 62 1/2 p.
Upstairs in the shop we had the rooms which had been the living quarters in the past. Now they were to be the store rooms for the shop dry stock. All the packets and cans of goods from around the world were stored up there and I had to sort out the orders for the other shops from it all. There were strange things I had never seen before like snails in a can with the empty shells to serve them in. Stem ginger in syrup in large Chinese pots was something I was fascinated to see. We had soy sauce and raw prawn crackers that exploded when you dropped them into hot fat. They even had the name Harbeng on the packets just like my dad had told me years ago. I even found cans of exotic fruits like lychees and mango, There was all the jewish food like matzos, it was all stuff that you could not get in any other shop. There were packets of German pumpernickel and cans with a whole pheasant. I thought why do you need canned pheasant when there are so many fresh ones down the road?
Working in one place was a new experience for me. Up until the shop in South road Waterloo opened I had been travelling about to the different shops each week setting them up and training the staff. They decided to open shops in North Wales, there was already off licences in Flint, Prestatyn and Denbigh. These were to be converted into delicatessens as well. I went out with Mr Fryer and showed the staff what to do and he brought me home each evening. A special promotion night was organised for the North Wales shops, Itwas to be held in Prestatyn in the rooms above the local theatre and I was to dress up in my chef’s outfit to promote the cooked meats I was making. I did some special roast hams. Pineapple and honey glazed, peach and honey glazed, almond baked and smoked ham glazed with port wine, these really made the customers mouths water. I did roast beef with horse radish or with mustard glaze and roast park with sage and onion stuffing and with bramley apple glaze. All these were carved by hand by me. Other suppliers were there too but I was very surprised to meet Chris Hedges from Hedges Frozen Foods. He had worked as waiter for Dad in the Morris Dancers and Mum had done the catering for his wedding. He was supplying all the shops with freezers and frozen foods. We got chatting about how Mum and my brothers were doing and had I seen my dad? He was really good to me and gave me a lift home to Burscough and came in to say hello to mum when he dropped me off.
One of my happiest memories was the day that a customer came in to the shop with a German shepherd. I thought I recognised him and I asked how long they had had him. They said they got him from the RSPCA in Birkdale the previous June. I asked if they had got his pedigree and they said they had. I asked was his show name Brutus of Robara. This is a combination of my mum and dads names. I was so pleased when they said yes. It was Brutus. I went out side and he seemed to remember me. He was really fit and was in perfect condition, I told them what had happened and how he was when he had been ours. They went off and I was left with a big lump in my throat. I never saw him again.
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