Going to the Outdoor

I was born just after the Second World War in Shirley - once a village but by then a suburb of Birmingham, on the edge of the countryside. At the time of my birth, home confinements were still common, and so I came into the world in lodgings behind a shop on Haslucks Green Road. My life until the age of 11 was spent almost entirely within about half a mile of that shop. I remember playing with the curtain that divided our lodgings from the shop, and being brought home in a car from hospital after I had had my tonsils removed. Then, at the age of 4, the family moved to a rented semi-detached house in Stroud Road. This had (it seemed to me at the time) a very long garden which ended in a sandpit. Behind the garden was a track and waste ground. In the distance was the railway line from Birmingham to Shirley. At the age of (just) 5, I started at Haslucks Green Primary School, which I would walk to myself when quite young. I would return home at midday for dinner, cooked by my mother, before walking back to school for the afternoon. When I was aged 11, my parents bought a semi-detached house in Haslucks Croft, where my mother still lives. This coincided with starting secondary school in Birmingham, and my life as a commuter began.

The shop that was my birthplace now sells fish-and-chips, but was then (I think) a grocer. It was therefore one of a great many types of shops that have almost entirely disappeared except in the smallest market towns. Down the road was a greengrocer and a butcher, and a post-office/tobacconist/newsagent. The strangest local shop was the outdoor. This sold alcohol, which could not be consumed on the premises. It was bare but clean, and consisted of a wooden counter on which were pumps for beer and a barrel of ‘wine from the wood’. Customers would arrive with jugs to be filled with beer. The shop had a distinctive smell of beer and vinegar, which I can still summon in my memory. The name ‘outdoor’ presumably derived from the back doors in pubs at which you could buy beer for home consumption. I would go to the outdoor to buy sweets rather than beer, which I do not remember my parents ever drinking.

A rival to the outdoor was home delivery, by a firm called Davenports. This had a large brewery in Birmingham and delivered to households in lorries painted bright red. There were daily home deliveries of milk (from the Co-op) and bread (from Hawley’s Bakery). Both used quiet electric vehicles. Coal was also delivered, but coalmen were regarded as untrustworthy, and I was always told to count the number of bags delivered.

This kind of retailing was all replaced by supermarkets, which began to spread in the 1970s. These were cheap because they offloaded some of their work to their customers. Instead of customers asking the grocer to collect their order and pack it, customers in supermarkets wander round the lengthy aisles themselves, selecting the goods they need (and some they do not need). Customers then pack the goods themselves and, increasingly, also check them out with a scanner. Much of what they ‘save’ (ie spend less) is cancelled by the cost of driving to and from the supermarket. Now of course, this is changing. People can select goods through the Internet, which are delivered to their homes by the supermarket companies. This has become so popular, that it is possible to imagine the supermarket buildings eventually becoming vast ruined cathedrals of commerce. In the meantime, I propose to take my jug round to the village pub and see if the landlord will start an outdoor service.

See also: What we ate and what we called it