STEPPING BACK IN TIME
AN INDEPENDENT REMEMBERS PART 42
I was constantly trying to find new ways to make money for the shop. Looking back, some of them weren’t as daft as they sound. Our independent remembers…
the thousands of cars that passed every working day, and I tried to get planning consent to erect an advertising billboard on it. Had I been successful, then I might have been kicking myself had my next idea then worked out: I fancied erecting a giant conservatory on the flat roof we had next door. Using my “O” level in technical drawing, I measured up, drew a plan and took it to a local architect to ask if it was feasible. After giving me a lecture about asking for his valuable advice before actually setting him on, he took one look at the plan and told me that the weight of the conservatory would require that the ground floor walls were excavated to strengthen the footings. Ha! I’d only wanted a nice, airy space with palm trees and a ladies’ strings trio where we would be able to sell tea, coffee and buns. Digging up the hardware shop below would have meant shutting down for months, which in those days was unthinkable … unlike now with the present virus lockdown. And then, in the 1990s – before
O
the mobile phone boom that has since added bulges to everyone’s trousers, if not their wallets – I read about the Rabbit phone network. These phones were cheaper than the Cellnets and Vodaphones and would work within 100 metres of a Rabbit base station. Well, I fancied that the demand for a Rabbit phone would be enormous and bring in a good few quid. I looked forward to getting a sign with the upside-down letter R logo on it. So I applied. That didn’t work, and anyhow the Rabbit thing didn’t last two years, largely because standard mobile phones came down in price, and I’m not certain that the Rabbits could actually take incoming calls – well, have you ever tried talking to a rabbit? So that was something else I couldn’t get my teeth into.
8 DIY WEEK APRIL 2020
ur premises had a large gabled wall that
was
from the end of the street, just
visible right
for being seen by
Abrasive remarks For merchandising abrasive papers, our main wholesaler had supplied us with a flatpack cardboard shelf unit from English Abrasives, but it wasn’t long before the shelves buckled and the whole thing folded up on itself. So I put in hardboard strengtheners, which worked for many years until I bought some office paper trays, all black with chrome supports. We were frequently asked for garnet paper, which wasn’t at all easy to source. No one else locally had it, either. We’d been stocking bog standard glass paper since the boss had been at school with Oliver Cromwell, but I didn’t like its minimal lifespan. What worked far better, and lasted far longer, was aluminium oxide paper. This was the stuff
from which power tool
sanding sheets were made and was another item not readily available in DIY shops in full sheets. However, we could get it from Maccess, the motor trade warehouse. We’d been spending a lot of money there, but there was a battleaxe at the signing-in desk, whom I suspected was a retired storm trooper, middle- aged and a blue rinse with an odour of cellulose paint, and every time I
By this time, the early-80s, I had discovered Diamond Abrasives in Oldham, and their papers were far, far cheaper than the brand leader
signed in she treated me with her Gestapo-like questioning. Was I a member of the motor trade? Well, I sold products for cars – and I could gas weld, if you remember – so I said I was. She would follow this with other questions, designed to trick me into confessing that I didn’t really have any right to enter the kingdom of the holy grail. And for good measure she’d also glance at my fingernails for signs of ground- in sump oil.
By this time, the early-80s, I had discovered Diamond Abrasives in Oldham, and their papers were far, far cheaper than the brand leader we’d been buying in for donkeys’ years. And guess what? Diamond
was actually the
brand leader’s
papers; the very same. And from them I could get both oxide and garnet papers. Oh yes, and extra fine wet or dry, so smooth it felt like writing paper and yet another rarity. I think that this was perhaps our first excursion into stocking product ranges in some considerable depth, and over the years I would do the same in other areas. So, when Maccess had its fire and no one mourned the loss of the tropical fish in the reception area, I never went back there.
Situation vacant We needed staff – or rather I wanted staff. The boss thought that we could carry on with just the two of us and the motor engineer’s daughter (every other Saturday). But it was no good. You’ll know how it feels when the shop is filling with customers and you simply can’t serve them fast enough? And so many of the requests were time-consuming and often resulted in a sale of only pence, when pound sales were walking out of the door because we simply couldn’t get to them in time. This was serious, and I was determined to get someone on board.
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