Memories of Langdale Road Shops (3)

1:42pm Tuesday 23rd September 2008

This story concerns a very embarrassing errand I was sent on when I was ten years old. You couldn’t have picked a worse thing to send a young boy for a yard of knicker elastic. My dad had given me a small piece of paper with the words written in blue biro.

Audrey’s wool shop in Langdale Road was at the time an all female domain.

Full of little wooden draws with glass fronts, that held multi coloured wool and sewing thread, knitting patterns and knitting needles.

As I opened the door there was a hushed silence and all the middle aged women turned round to look at me. They were surprised to see a young boy in the shop. The female assistant took the note off me; I was blushing bright red by this time. I breathed a sigh of relief when she walked off to the back of the shop, I could feel a shop full of eyes burning into me. They were all keen to know what I had been sent for.

The female assistant came back smiling and said in a big loud voice “How wide does your mum want her knicker elastic? “An inch or three quarters of an inch?” I replied “an inch” guessing. All the middle-aged women’s heads swivelled like chickens in my direction. At that moment I wished the ground could have swallowed me up. I dashed all the way home.