Yes! We have no bananas

By Irene Drew

It was in the 1970s when I had a greengrocers shop in Lemington. I worked hard but loved meeting and talking to the people. That was the time when the money changed to decimal. I found it easy to change but many people struggled. Lots of people would hand me their purse and say “take out what I owe.” Then the younger customers came for “Big tattys for chips”. One day a young lady not used to shopping, asked for 4 ounces of potatoes. After putting her right about the weight I asked the usual – big potatoes? It doesn’t matter out them being big, as long as they are all the same size she said.

Every morning a little boy about 3 or 4 came in for sweets, it was always a mix up of little sweets. However, he always had a runny nose – thick green stuff. I got a couple of tissues and said “come here and I’ll wipe your nose. He was quite happy with that, so I did it every morning. One day he came later and the shop was full of customers. Instead of keeping him waiting, I got his sweets and gave them to him. He went towards the door, turned round and said, “You haven’t swiped me nose.” What could I do – I got the tissues, wiped his nose and he went off happy. I apologised to my customers but they all had a good laugh.

The shop was broken into twice. First we had a little window in the toilet. Someone had broken the window and crawled through only to find a blank door with nothing to open it. My husband had removed the bolt and fastened it to the shop side. So they had to scramble back through the little window.

The next time, when six young boys came in at closing time to buy chocolates and apples to take camping out. They each got some things to keep them going. I had a delivery from the wholesaler and got this big hand of bananas.

It was three times as big as a normal hand. One young lad said, “Wow! Look at those bananas. They are fantastic.” Off they went to camp out. In the middle of the night I got a call from the police to say the shop had been broken into. The first thing I noticed was the bananas were gone. I told the detective about them. I knew the name of the boy and the street where he lived. The detective found the boy and mentioned the bananas. Well they all confessed and said they were sorry so I said to drop the charges.

I don’t know what happened to the bananas.