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Saturday jobs

I was a paper boy at Ryans on Kingstanding Road when I was about eleven, paid 2/6d a week for both mornings and evenings then moved along the road to Kirtons for a bit better pay,
Saturdays I worked for Bradford's Bread in Norton Street Hockley on a delivery van with a man called Walter Smith, the route was all around the Hockley Handsworth and Lozells areas, pay was 7/6d for the day, started at 7am by loading hot bread straight form the ovens into the van, finished about 5pm

Ps. Viv, your part time firemen comment reminded me, when I was at work proper the company who did our car respraying was in Summer Road Erdington, a man named Murphy, he employed the firemen from across the road to do the preparation work on the cars, filling, rubbing down the paint and the final polishing..
 
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Welcome Sargasosal. Yes hard to believe Woolies had fruit & veg counters. I also remember them selling groceries like tea, coffee, jam, sugar etc. Viv.
 
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In 1956 I worked at my aunts greengrocer & fishmonger shop on Litchfield Rd in Aston. Would go to the market on Saturday morning at 5.00am with my uncle to get fresh fish. For Saturday I got 7/6. then I moved in 1957 to WT Baker butcher on SoHo Rd, right opposite Boulton Rd. I cut & delivered meat on Tuesday, Thursday & Friday night and all day Saturday. I was paid 15/6 plus tips and some meat to take home every night.
 
In 1956 I worked at my aunts greengrocer & fishmonger shop on Litchfield Rd in Aston. Would go to the market on Saturday morning at 5.00am with my uncle to get fresh fish. For Saturday I got 7/6. then I moved in 1957 to WT Baker butcher on SoHo Rd, right opposite Boulton Rd. I cut & delivered meat on Tuesday, Thursday & Friday night and all day Saturday. I was paid 15/6 plus tips and some meat to take home every night.
Shoot that was a god deal on the meat, who got to eat meat more than once a week back then ?
 
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Edifi,

The curse of the modern age. Jan will never buy pre-packed veg as they go off a lot quicker than the loose variety, especially mushrooms.

Nice Woolies picture, Ade. :)

Maurice
 
Not strictly a Saturday job but had a relief paper round at Job's in Broadstone Rd in Yardley ie when someone else was on holiday. This was followed with a job working with a Scribbans bread roundsman, "Nat" Nevin, around Lea Hall and Tile Cross. This started when I was twelve in 1953 until I left school in 1958. I know that initially I was too young to legally do the job and when I was thirteen became registered, can't remember with whom, and had to have a medical each year, I think at the local School Clinic and was only suppose to work very few hours each day, just had to hope that no one checked on you outside of the permitted hours. A bit of a nuisance but I suppose was to protect us from exploitation. In the later years used to drive the van, Morris "J" Series, don't suppose that was strictly legal either but I did have a license and "L" plates.
 
My first job, in 1967, was Friday evening for three hours and all day Saturday for £1. This was at a small supermarket, opposite the 'new Woolworths' on the Cov Road in Small Heath. I moved to Littlewoods for £1.5s for Saturday only, on the bacon counter.
 
Worked in a photographer’s shop 1962-64, from just turned the age of ten. Began 8.30AM to 6.30Pm, for ten shillings for the first year, and £1 for the second. Began the day sweeping-up outside the shop, mopping the doorway and, if necessary, polishing the store window; vacuumed front of store carpet. Made tea and coffee; swept and tidied the back yard and cleaned the toilet; ran errands; made more tea and coffee; dusted display goods; tidied store cupboards; made even more coffee and tea ...

Then worked as a gardener for just short a year - for the first six months I had to the cut the lawn/weeds with a full sized scythe, before my employer bought a Suffolk Punch mower, which I almost destroyed the first day!

After which I worked at a wholesale fruit&veg market, from 5AM until 4PM. My first day was spent loading/unloading lorries with 56lb, sacks of potatoes - spent the entire next day in bed, and most of the following week walking like a geriactic! By week five (and after a working a full week, during a school holiday) I was physically a different kid - muscled and taller. Good money too, earning a fiver plus, which wasn’t bad pay back in 1966, for a just turned fourteen year old lad. During that year I grew four inches in height, weighed near eleven stone, and looked like a junior Charles Atlas!

Opting for an easier life (?) I then worked at the local ‘Fine Fair Supermarket’ until I left school. This was great, has it had girls working there!

All of which was very valuable experience and taught me a great deal - mostly, that the old saying ‘hard work never killed anyone’ was a damned bloody lie, and best avoided whenever possible. Alas, it was another six years before I truly learned how to avoid it - a skill I’ve retained to this day!
 
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Haha that's a great story JohnO I totally agree with what you say about the physical work, I was the same after working at the fruit and veg shop it changed my appearance and made me a lot stronger it was like going to the gym everyday and really helped in any school sports I was involved in, tell you what though a fiver a week in the sixties you must have been the most popular kid in the street :):)
 
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This is the Woolies fruit and veg counter in the fifties, beautifully laid out as you would imagine from a big store like Woolies.
Picture posted on the Woolworth museum website
Is it just me or have I have a bad memory ? I cant remember veggies all packaged up like that when I was young. Mind you mum always went to a little veggie shop that sold out of a bungalow just round the corner off coventry rd in Sheaf lane sheldon and it was all fresh veg.
Wendy
 
Is it just me or have I have a bad memory ? I cant remember veggies all packaged up like that when I was young. Mind you mum always went to a little veggie shop that sold out of a bungalow just round the corner off coventry rd in Sheaf lane sheldon and it was all fresh veg.
Wendy
My dad reckons when you bought anything the grocer always wrapped everything up in paper like fish and chips, nothing was ever pre -wrapped
 
Is it just me or have I have a bad memory ? I cant remember veggies all packaged up like that when I was young. Mind you mum always went to a little veggie shop that sold out of a bungalow just round the corner off coventry rd in Sheaf lane sheldon and it was all fresh veg.
Wendy
I don't remember Woolies selling fruit and veg. I remember the various 'slab' cakes they had where you asked for a piece to be weighed. Woolies was the best shop for a lot of things.
 
JohnO,

You've obviously never tried harvesting olives after rain on sloping ground (olive bashing as we call it). You ache for weeks afterwards! :)

Maurice
 
JohnO,

You've obviously never tried harvesting olives after rain on sloping ground (olive bashing as we call it). You ache for weeks afterwards! :)

Maurice

Not Olives, no, but acres of bleedin’ potatoes, and stone-picking too! Mind, I must admit that the fields were generally quite flat, so I’ll give you that one. The worse of it was having to occasionally work with a gang of overly excitable, feral women - they scared the hell out of me! It was their full time job, and they used to travel around the country in the back of an old truck. Similar female gangs existed until relatively recently, when they were replaced by foreign workers, who undercut their wages. It was not a case of Brits not wanting to do the work; they were priced out of the game.
 
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