106287 106748 Divi-Day

I initiated a party trick a few years ago. I wrote down the numbers 287 on a piece of paper and kept the numbers hidden from everyone. I then said to the group I'm going to say three numbers and predict what three numbers Iain Hoffmann will come up with in response. The younger members of the group were particularly astonished when I got my prediction right.

The six numbers referred to the numbers which we had to quote whenever we visited The Store-this was our St Cuthbert's Cooperative allocated store number. The number was engrained into us from an early age, although some nameless members of the family had to have it written down for a few years!

It meant that we we were part owners-well, a teeny part-owner of the company; thus any time a member of the family visited  The Store and made a purchase it was important to always give the number.

Twice a year a dividend was paid out to each member-it was a percentage of what had been spent in the previous six months, but also was based on the profit the company had made. The second number in the title was The Blades' number-they must have signed up almost five hundred customers later than ourselves.

For many families in the city it was an important time in the year. After the money was paid out at Bread Street, Mrs Hoffmann would take Anne, Iain and me straight in to town to buy new school shoes and such like. We would go to Clarks-the x ray machine for checking that the shoes fitted properly was fascinating...!

In the decades before the 1960s it probably was the difference between many children going shoe-less-Divi-Day was that important. I may be wrong, but I think some families in the local Stairs only bothered collecting their dividend once a year using it to pay for either Christmas or for a summer holiday-we never had that luxury of allowing it to build up, instead queuing up on the first day that it could be collected!

'A horse!, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!'

In earlier blogs I've commented on the relationship that many families within The Stair had with the various Pedlars, Hawkers and Salesmen who visited regularly.The opposite of a relationship in the exchange of goods and services is a transaction.

It's an interesting concept particularly when looking at social change over the decades. In the past we had a relationship with the grocer; the doctor; the bank manager-today it's been replaced by a transaction at Tesco's; the health centre; or by telephone banking.

The upside, in our busy lives, is that we are able to speed through the checkout, without having to bring the person at the checkout up to speed on news about the family. The downside comes when one visits the health centre- it's a different doctor, who doesn't know you and who always has to check your notes on the computer screen.

Surprisingly, one vendor who we had no relationship with, was the milkman-no joke intended! The Hoffmanns got their milk delivery from St Cuthbert's Co-operative. A few other families in The Stair were the same-The Swansons were one such family, but the majority of families had other arrangements.

The reason why we didn't have a relationship was partly because of the incredibly early time in the morning at which the milk was delivered-was it around 2.00 am? Indeed the milkman was almost a ghostly presence, with the milk appearing like magic-one would open the door in the morning to bring it in for our cornflakes and there was our three bottles of milk standing erect like soldiers or bowling pins.

However the main reason why we had no relationship with the milkman was because of the interesting system which St Cuthbert's Co-operative operated. There was no billing or weekly money collections by the milkman so he didn't arrive at your doorstep on a Friday evening, which was how Edinburgh & Dumfrieshire operated. Instead a token system was used. whereby milk tokens were left inside the empty bottles which were left out for return. It must have been messy for the milkman and milk-boy-our empties were always very clean, but along with the tokens there must have been a mix of water and even milk on their hands. Saturdays with a double delivery would have been very tiring.

The tokens were purchased each week at The Store at Oxgangs Drive North. There was a separate section in The Store where ladies sat behind glass panels-a bit similar to the old banks-and distributed the tokens-for us it would be twenty one tokens. I can still recall the face of a woman with dark hair and glasses who worked there for decades-I wonder if she was a spinster who had to look after herself?

There were black tokens for when the milk price had risen and red tokens for normal use; there was also half pint tokens too, which was a nice touch if one were an old aged pensioner living alone-something which the supermarket giants wouldn't dream of running today!

The price of milk evidently often went down in the summer and back up in the winter. If customers were not informed it meant they could be spending an extra penny a pint, which over a period of time could mount up, for hard pressed families. Although one could see the Co-op's logic, surely like today's 1st class postage stamps, would it not have been easier just to have operated a single token?

Probably because Oxgangs was such an outlying area, we never enjoyed the pleasure of having our milk delivered by horse-drawn cart the way it was in the centre of town at Marchmont, Tollcross or Stockbridge. Instead it was always a lorry which delivered the milk. As many people are aware Sean Connery was the Co-op's most famous milk-boy and he loved the horses. He worked for St Cuthbert's for many years. Indeed his employee records turned up recently from the archives and were displayed at the National Library at George IV Bridge.

Sean Connery payslip from St Cuthbert's Dairy
(Being A Scot, Sean Connery)

Sean Connery with Archivist at National Library
(Being A Scot, Sean Connery)

A horse!, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Aye if only we'd had our milk delivered by horse and cart, we'd have had a relationship with oor milkman, rather than a transaction!

Photograph Douglas Corrance