First of all, there was no Sunday shopping. None. Zero. Shops simply did not open on Sundays, even in London. If you ran out of something, you waited until Monday. There was no “popping out” to top-up the store cupboard, let alone a full weekly shop.

Second, you needed to know which day was early closing day. All town and even most cities closed one afternoon a week to make up for being open on Saturday mornings. And just like Sunday, by closed I mean closed: everything shut up shop and everyone went home.

Third, there were no supermarkets until later into the decade, so a trip to the shops involved walking between multiple shops – the grocer, the greengrocer, the fishmonger, the butcher, the baker, the ironmonger – for each of the items you wanted. To a bored child being dragged from dull store to dull store, this was hell. If you were really unlucky, the shopping would take place on Market Day and you’d also be dragged from boring stall to boring stall, sometimes almost crying out in boredom.

Fourth, there were no cash machines. To get money, you went into a bank – your own bank, the high street banks didn’t co-operate – and made a cheque out to “cash” or to “self”. In bigger stores, you paid by cheque. If you were a regular and were trusted, some local stores might run you a monthly tab, which you paid by cash or cheque – there were no direct debits and no credit cards either.

From a 1960s point of view, it’s hard to imagine how shopping could become the national pastime it now is; likewise, from a modern perspective, the laborious nature of shopping can’t be imagined either.

Archive source: http://retropia.co.uk/

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People’s memories of what we wore in the 1960s are almost invariably wrong.

Television and the last days of the newsreels show the Young Things shopping at Biba and other boutiques on Carnaby Street, or towards the end of the decade in dirty and shapeless paisley in the middle of a field. This was what made the news, but it wasn’t what the rest of us were wearing.

For the most part, even the middle classes couldn’t afford to shop on Carnaby Street. These type of boutiques, now found in Notting Hill, were expensive then and are expensive now. Most of us were wearing clothes that were handed down from older siblings or bought from Woolworths. For very important occasions, a trip to Dorothy Perkins for a party dress or John Collier for a 50/- suit was in order – but they were for best. For the rest of the time, we stayed in our school uniforms and used them for any ‘formal’ occasion with a parent: going shopping, going to a cafe, going for a day out. Even on weekends!

But the clothes we got for special occasions got more colourful and more plastic as the decade wore on. Nylon and polyester had the benefit of not needing ironing and you could wash them in the sink with warm water from the tap – no more boiling, spinning and mangling. The downside: boy did we sweat… and we were still waiting for antiperspirant to be invented (or at least taken up by boys, who didn’t want to smell “queer”).

Still, at home we defaulted to clothes that looked like they were – and often actually were – made in the 1950s. Newsreels and collective memory don’t record this.

Image source: http://ads.retropia.co.uk/

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