OUT INTO THE WIDE WORLD

MARKET STORES PETT LEVEL

I left school at 15 because although I would have liked to go on to further education (and always regretted not doing so) it was expected of me to earn a salary so that I could contribute to our household income. I got a job straight away age of 15 at the village store which had an ice cream parlour adjacent which I was allowed to manage.



ME SELLING ICES



I soon learned how to make ice cream, knicker- bocker-glorys, ice cream sodas and many other concoctions and even used to carry a heavy ice box on to the beach and sell ice creams to the sun worshippers.

When I progressed to work in the village shop, rationing was still in force so one of my first lessons was weighing up two ounces of cheese and margarine into little greece-proof paper packets and weighing sugar in pound and two pound blue paper bags. We also sold fresh local vegetables fresh fish and poultry and I soon learnt how to clean and fillet fish, pluck and prepare game and poultry and skin and quarter rabbits and hares

FRYING TONIGHT

The next phase my boss embarked on was building an annex onto the shop and installing a fish and chip fryer with chairs and tables for customers to eat their meal on the premises. In those days we used huge cartons of dripping in the two frying compartments one for fish and one for chips. These had to be changed weekly which was my job and I hated it as it was such a messy chore but I did enjoy the times I was allowed to do the frying and serving up. After a while my Boss who he and his family later became life-long friends started a delivery service of fish and chip orders to out-lying areas which became very popular.

SUNDAY SCHOOL

My working life here ceased in the late fifties when due to the financial climate many businesses were forced to stop trading. I still remained good friends with Jim Flo and the children and spent many Saturday evenings child minding for them. I can remember taking Helen and John to Sunday school at Pett Methodist Chapel every Sunday morning on the bus.

MAUREEN & DAD JIM



Jim and his family immigrated to New Zealand in the sixties to start a new life and I have kept in contact with the family ever since. I was a student nurse when Maureen their youngest was born and I was honoured to be asked by her Mum and Dad to be one of her two God Mothers. Unfortunately I was on duty the day of her christening but her Mother stood proxy for me and from that day to the present we have always been close although parted by thousands of miles.

It was with sadness that within the past few years Flo then Jim passed away but I have many great memories of them. I have had the privilege of visiting Maureen and her family three times in Hawera North Island the last visit being in 2010 when I had the opportunity to visit her and her family again this time with another long suffering friend.