Gastronomic pleasures of the '60s

Britain was not a foodie's paradise in the 1960s. Food was essentially dull stodge. School meals were unspeakably awful (gristly meat in gravy, powdered lumpy mashed potatoes, over-boiled greens). Ready meals didn't really exist - only Bird's Eye Chicken Pie springs to mind, bits of chicken and garden peas in that ubiquitous gravy, all in a pastry shell. I liked Bird's Eye Chicken Pie, associating it with those very rare occasions on which my mother was ill and my father would cook.

Supermarkets were still rare. I remember the old Sainsbury's on the Uxbridge Road in West Ealing before it was turned into a supermarket. There would be a grocery counter (queue here for sage and onion stuffing, gravy powder, jam, tinned pilchards and tapioca), a dairy counter (queue here for butter and cheese), a meat counter (queue here for lamb chops, mince and cold cuts). My favourites from Sainsbury's were mature Canadian Cheddar, gum-tinglingly good, with the word 'CANADA' stamped on the rind, and Hungarian salami (10/6d a pound, I recall); the right balance of meatiness, spiciness and under-stated garlic. Self-service came to our Sainsbury's some time in the mid-'60s.

My mother would do most of her shopping (very) locally, buying meat at Mr Laurence's, which typically she'd mince, add an egg and bread, and shape meatballs (kotlety mielone) for the frying pan. Fruit and veg at the greengrocer's further along the parade on Oaklands Road. Bread would come from Parker's on the Uxbridge Road (mostly ghastly white sliced); groceries (as in items in tins, packets, jars) from Sainsbury's. Ah, and fish - from MacFisheries on the Uxbridge Road.

Milk came delivered daily to our doorstep courtesy of Express Dairy's electric milk float. I remember yoghurt appearing in the late '60s; we'd first sampled this dairy delight on holiday in France; soon after our milkman began selling it. I also recall my brother (aged five) running down the middle of the Croft Gardens chasing the milk float and shouting at the milkman to stop as he wanted a yoghurt.

Tea was an essential requisite in every English household, and ours, despite its exotic provenance, was no exception. This was an age before the teabag. Tea was bought loose (we'd favour Brooke Bond) in quarter-pound packets, which often came with collector's cards (Butterflies of the World, for instance). The leaves would go into a glazed ceramic teapot (I recall one with blue-and-white stripes; I guess they'd be broken frequently or have chipped spouts so they'd not pour straight). Boiled water would come from the kettle that was boiled on the gas stove. I can see the kettle now; lime scale in the spout, aluminium, black bakelite (?) handle and lid knob, blackened around the base by the town gas flames. The tea would be served with milk, and for us young ones, with sugar. And Rich Tea biscuits. To my current taste buds - repulsive. At the time, reassuring, calming, nourishing and as English as Queen Victoria*.

Being Polish, the more adventurous food in our house came from Pan Rozwadowski's Polish shop on the corner of Northfields Avenue and Elers Road. Here, my parents would buy powidly (plum jam), smoked meats, krówki (Polish cream fudge) and other foreign-currency earning products denied its subjects by Poland's communist regime

Food in Britain suddenly became exciting in the 1970s with the advent of foreign food. Until then, Britons of almost all classes were condemned to an awful diet.

* Who, as Captain Edmund Blackadder pointed out had 'a German father, was married to a German and was surnamed Saxe-Coburg-Gotha'.

Autumn

Autumns started earlier in England than they do in Poland; to put it another way, summers would end sooner (and in any case were cooler and wetter). School would start at the beginning of September and all thoughts of summer would soon fade amid the wood-varnish and Magic Marker smells of the new school year.

By the time of my birthday in October, gloom would have descended; wet pavements, darkness just after tea-time and the early evening news in black and white, electric fires and, outside, the all-pervasive dampness.

I remember my tenth birthday; 1967. My present, well-remembered, was a Dinky Toys Rolls-Royce Phantom V. My father bought it at Confiserie Francaise, the best toyshop in Ealing Broadway (on the Mall). We walked down the Uxbridge Road to Ealing Common, where I took the car out of its box (but not off the stand; as well as all four doors opening, the boot opened as did the bonnet (on two sides). It cost 10/6d. That's 52.5p expressed in today's money, though the equivalent value today would be more like £7.00.

On Ealing Common we collected conkers (horse chestnuts) under the large, wet, reddish-brown leaves until the drizzle became more like rain and we retreated to the car, returning home to Croft Gardens so I could play with my new toy.

Of bread and cakes

A flashback the other day, prompted by the cakey smell of icing sugar. On the Uxbridge Road in West Ealing, across the road from Woolworth's, there was a cake shop. In the window were wedding cakes and birthday cakes, demonstrating the shop's artistry. The smell inside was characteristic; sweet, marzipan, icing sugar, shortening. Battenberg cakes, Bakewell tarts, custard pies small and large in tin foil, cakes with hundreds and thousands on top, cakes with little metal ballbearings on top... Very, very rarely, I'd go in with my mother to buy a cake here.

More often, we'd go across the road, past British Home Stores, towards Hanwell, to T. Parker's Bakery. Here the smell was of fresh bread, rolls and buns. My mother would buy both bread that was typically English - white sliced, granary, and continental - croissants with poppy-seed, challa, baguettes. Parker's has closed down on the Uxbridge Road, but the shop on Northfields Avenue is still in business (it opened in 1913).

West Ealing

The nearest proper shops to us were on the Uxbridge Road as it ran through West Ealing. Here was a Sainbury's (not yet a supermarket), a Marks & Spencers (where nearly all my clothes came from), a Woolworth's, a British Home Stores (where we didn't shop), a MacFisheries and a Dolcis – the shoe-shop chain seen in any other suburb or city. There was a big(ish) department store, F.H. Rowse's, a smaller one, Daniel's, Parkers, a bakery which always had a marvellous smell of fresh bread, Bland's the optician - and the pubs. The Halfway House, towards the Hanwell end of West Ealing, the Green Man (with a pub sign I used to find scary), and between them, the Old Hat. I remember witnessing a fire in an upper-story room of the Old Hat one evening in the early 1960s; a crowd of people watching as firemen hosed water at the blaze through an open window from a Dennis appliance parked in the courtyard.

In the days before double yellow lines, the Uxbridge Road served as an experimental stretch with double red lines - denoting the limits of the pedestrian-controlled crossings; here you pushed a button, rather like today, but instead of an illuminated green man telling you when to cross, there was an animated walking matchstick-figure (cross) or stationary stick-figure (don't cross). I remember these very well (they were in the same places as the crossings are today), but can't find any reference to them online.

Toy shops... very important to me. Well, Woolworth's had a reasonable range of Airfix kits, Tanner's on Oaklands Road had Matchbox toys, but for Corgi and Dinkies (larger die-cast toy cars) there was only one shop on a short passage by Deans Gardens. Sadly, this shop either closed or else became a radio and TV shop, but while it was open, it was a great treat to be taken here by my parents to choose a Dinky or Corgi toy. The men serving at the toy shop wore brown warehouse coats, shirts and ties; when ordering a toy, I would look at the catalogue to see which toy car I wanted. The man would look at the catalogue number and would scour the boxes (yellow for Dinky, pale blue and yellow for Corgi) for the right catalogue number. If in stock, he would take out the box from the rack on the wall, open it and show me the car. If it met with my approval, my mother or father would pay, the box would be wrapped up and we'd take it home.

The Uxbridge road was served by red London double decker buses. There was the 207, from Uxbridge to Shepherd's Bush; this replaced the 607 trolleybus which I can still remember catching with my mother to visit friends who lived in Shepherd's Bush. The trolleybuses weron this route were withdrawn from service in November 1960 (I was just three at the time) and replaced by Routemaster buses. Below: A 607 trolleybus on the Uxbridge Road at Ealing Common, on its way to Shepherd's Bush. I always wanted to go on the upper deck, but my mother explained that 'bad people' (i.e. smokers) were up there.

Below: a lovely little film showing the 607 from Shepherd's Bush and onwards through Acton, via Ealing Common and on to Southall, Hillingdon and Uxbridge.