by Cressida Miles

Weeks at Green Garth during my frequent holidays there in the fifties and early sixties were enlivened by the visits to Yealand of the mobile shops.

Mondays and Thursdays, as far as I remember, were Mr Brown’s days. Mr Brown was the baker’s van man, and I believe ha came from Hartley’s grocery store in Carnforth. He was a wonderful person, all brown and twinkly. He wore a brown cotton coat, and drove a small snub-nosed grey van. The van was set up with wide wooden drawers in the back, which slid out to reveal all kinds of loaves of bread, and buns, cakes and Shrewsbury biscuits, and also a small selection of sweets: mint imperials, jelly babies, licorice allsorts and fruit pastilles. A warm smell of baking wafted out into the road from the open van doors, and around Easter there would be the wonderful spicy scent of the large and particularly delicious Hot Cross Buns, which I have never since been able to match. Mr Brown was full of interesting conversation and stories. One particular story of his, which has always stuck in my mind, concerned a harvest worker who was extolling the virtues of a proper breakfast on which to go to work. The punch line of this story was: “Bacon and eggs, look out for your legs!” Mr Brown told this story with gusto, and appropriate scything action. He often came in to have a cup of tea when the sales were completed. He was a friend to us and, I imagine, to every household he visited.

Mr Postlethwaite’s van came on alternate Mondays. Mr Postlethwaite dealt in hardware which in those days, seemed to cover anything and everything from paraffin and bleach to teapots, and from cakes of green Fairy soap to bath plugs and clothe pegs. His van was like an Aladdin’s cave and had strange distinctive smell of polish, new cloths soap powder. Everyone came out of the house to watch Mr Postlethwaite slide up the slatted side and display the crowded shelves. We bought stocks of soap and cleaners, dusters and the “pink” paraffin which came out of a large container at the back of the van. All the purchases were conveyed into the kitchen and placed on the large kitchen table from which I would “keep shop” and “sell” them again to the patient adults, before they were allowed to put them away. Mr Postlethwaite too, and his helper, often stayed for a cup of tea. I wonder how many cups of tea those mobile shopkeepers drank during their travels around the villages!

Less permanent visitors were a series of fishmongers’ vans, which would come and sell a small selection of “wet” fish on the doorsteps. There was often not a great deal of choice available: plaice or cod, with the occasional piece of halibut seemed to be about the limit. The smell of these vans was predictably strong and attractive to cats who lingered longingly under any fishy drips falling from the weighing scales at the back.

I remember a vegetable van being around the village too, but noone at Green Garth ever bought from it, there being so much produce from the garden already. Other kinds of provisions could be ordered by phone and were delivered by van; the butcher brought an order once a week. He came in by the back gate, and through the garden, where he would leave bones for the delighted dogs to bury. In the later sixties the Health Food Store in Silverdale would also deliver an order if required, and I expect other shops did as well. I am sure that other people must have memories, different from mine, of these vans. They were certainly a feature of village life in my childhood, and I thought them very special. The only delivery we had in London was the milk, originally by horse and cart and later by milk van, so a shop in a van, as far as I was concerned, had a particular magic appeal.

Published in Mourholme Magazine Issue 31 1998