Places   (Help with places, streets and buildings in Wigan.)

I too must apologise to Sir Bob for taking over his thread about Ince, but thank him too as we wouldn't have got to exchange all these memories. If you ever go to Bridlington, there is a shop called Boyes.....you see them all over Yorkshire. They're a bit like Woolworth's. In the Bridlington Branch there is.....or WAS.....a café on the top floor and a little museum of the shop in its former days, and it shows the chutes where the money used to go and explains how it worked. We haven't been for a few years so don't know if it's still there. They were quite common; Oxley's in Wigan used to have one when I was little, as well as Pendlebury's, but I think you could see the tubes then. Co-ops used to have them and the late Thora Hird describes in one of her books how she was the lady in the cash office who received the bill and the customer's money, then sent the capsule whooshing back to the sales floor with the customer's receipt and change.
How young I was on that photo!.....I would only have been 22, and Carmel was next to me but you can only see half her face. Yes, they did still have clocking-in cards as you went in the back entrance, but it later changed to signing in via a book, but I'm SO glad I got to clock in before it finished......I love old ways and hate to see them die out.
Lewis is beautiful in its own way, but it's not my sort of scenery. It's certainly peaceful, though. We have a photo of Ashley and Andrew's tiny house on top of our telly, and when the weather forecast comes on and shows Stornoway I always look at it and think of her. She lives about 20 miles from Stornoway, (just a pin-prick on the weather-map), but that is where they have to go to do their shopping, and if the weather is bad and the ferries can't get across there are often shortages in the supermarkets, but the islanders just accept that.
What did you wear for work at Debenhams? Did Max Factor have a uniform? I remember at my interview Miss Holland told me what to wear when I started.....I can't recall if it was a black dress or just "plain and dark". Anyway, I had a plain black and I wore that, but not long after we got a uniform, and there was a choice of a navy dress with a bow, or a navy pinafore with a choice of two blouses.....a shirt-type collar or a bow. I remember running up the back stairs to the canteen......I'd be puffing and blowing now! But at least we're still here, Jazzy!