Articles
Christmas 2023
Village Shop Talk
Christmas is coming, the geese are increasingly concerned about their body mass indices, turkeys are avoiding anything that looks like a voting slip, and the village shop is getting its act together for the most important month of the year.
Like many other retailers, it finds its takings begin to increase in December. As with alcohol, this is a good thing if it gives us a little boost, but dangerous if we come to rely on it. Sadly, over the last few years, the shop has become a sort of Christmasolic. The seasonal increase in our takings should help us to keep on providing a service to the village over the coming twelve months, but only if it actually materialises. A recent retail survey revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, that the combined effects of inflation and higher interest rates are decreasing the average person’s spending power. Total spending may rise slightly, but it will result in fewer purchases as prices rise. In response, many people are planning to begin their Christmas shopping early to spread the cost. And that’s where the village shop can help you, and you can help the shop.
Elsewhere in the magazine you should find details of the planned community event in the village hall on 1st December. There will be a mini-shop with our special Christmas stock, and the shop itself will also be open later than usual that evening. You can also pre-order your Christmas meat, poultry, and fish. We would like the order forms (they were included in November’s magazine, and more copies are available in the shop) completed by 6th December, please, and we ask for a deposit of £25 with each meat and poultry order. Think of it as a way of spreading the cost! It’s worth having a look at the wide range of festive treats listed on the order form. As well as geese and turkeys, you can order beef, gammon, and sausage meat, various kinds of smoked salmon, cheeses, Christmas puddings, and various wines and spirits. An order of half a dozen bottles of wine attracts a discount of 10 per cent, and there are similar discounts on beers and ciders. And, of course, you can also pre-order your fruit and vegetables too. If you are looking for presents, we stock a range of attractively packaged chocolates, biscuits, Devon Cottage fudge, Clovelly soaps, pottery, and some beautifully-made colourful cotton shopping bags. And for that last-minute present when your budget has reached its limit, don’t forget the second-hand books behind the door at the back of the shop. Happy Christmas!
Paul Brassley
October 2023
Village Shop Talk
Here is a brief lesson in economics. An economist sees a certain amount of profit as one of the unavoidable costs of a business. If it does not make enough profit to compensate the owners for the time they spend and the risks they take in running the business, they will close it down and put their time and money into another business that will make a profit. That’s the theory. In practice, of course, it’s a bit more complex. It may take some time for sales to reach a level where the business makes a profit, and the owners may be willing to accept that delay in the hope or expectation of future rewards. Hence the dot com boom of a few years ago. Some owners continue to run a business even though it does not make a profit because they enjoy doing so. This is called farming. Big businesses financed by shareholders have to make enough profit to keep the shareholders happy.
But none of this applies to the village shop. None. Why?
The village shop is a community shop. As the name suggests, it is run by members of the community in order to provide a service to the community as a whole. Therefore it does not have to make a profit. It has to make enough money to pay for the goods it buys from wholesalers, plus enough to cover overheads such as electricity bills. If there is money left over after all the bills have been paid, it is donated to local organisations. But we try to keep prices as low as possible, so that doesn’t always happen.
Obviously supermarkets buy much greater quantities than we do, so they can negotiate lower costs. But they have to make a profit, so by the time they’ve added that on, their prices can be higher than village shop prices. One local supermarket was recently charging 11p more for a packet of digestive biscuits, 10p more for 6 large free range eggs, 35p more for a jar of horseradish sauce, 11p more for a packet of frozen peas, and 21p more for a packet of cream crackers, all compared to village shop prices at the same time. Some items, such as newspapers, have to be sold at the price set by the suppliers, and have a low profit margin, but providing them is a service to the community, so it’s what a community shop does. And it also provides a space where community members run into each other, and talk about other village institutions. Don’t just add to a supermarket’s profits; come and use the village shop, and keep the community going!
Paul Brassley
September 2023
Village Shop Talk
Life in the village shop, like life in general, is a mixture of the regular or cyclical and the unexpected. And just as life would be less than ideal without the regular recurrence of sunrise and sunset and three meals a day, but a bit boring if that’s all there was to it, without anything unusual or unexpected, so it is in the shop. What happens might be thought of as the regular, the semi-regular, the irregular, and the cyclical. Every day the shop has to be opened and closed. We have a system whereby newspapers can be bought by voucher (much the cheapest way of getting them), and those regular orders have to be put in the box outside the door. Almost every day a cyclist rides up from Liverton to buy a newspaper, which is certainly one way of keeping fit. Every week the shop staff put together regular orders for customers, some to be collected, and some to be delivered. Some people order a range of groceries, some specific items, such as their favourite kinds of yoghurt, for example. Every day we take delivery of fresh milk, fruit and vegetables from our local supplier, and every week there is a delivery of meat from Cox and Lafflin and another of sausage rolls, pasties, quiches and cheeses.
If that was all that went on life in the shop might be comfortable but a trifle tedious. But it isn’t. We often know when somebody in the village is having work done on their house, because we find that for a time the builders or decorators involved will come into the shop to buy their lunch. If it’s a big job they can become familiar faces, and we have bought in products that they have specifically requested. Which, of course, we can do for anybody. If you are going to need lots of meat, or fish and seafood, for a particular event, it’s always worth asking if we can get it for you. These are the semi-regular events. There are also the cyclical events, most notably the annual festival of preparation of Christmas orders. And then there are the irregular events, like the visitors who come in and express surprise at finding such a range of goods and services ‘in the back of beyond’. To them we simply point out that Ilsington is actually the centre of the world.
Paul Brassley
August 2023
Village Shop Talk
Weather-wise, it has been an interesting summer, with a hot dry June succeeded by a wet July here, but searing heat and wild fires further south in Europe, and in North America. It is increasingly difficult to argue that these phenomena are unconnected with global warming. Yet at the same time politicians are faced with unpredictable outcomes and voter reactions when they try to introduce policies to combat climate change. Given the apparent impotence of the powerful, we may wonder if there is anything that we ourselves, as individuals and families, can do to make an impact on the problem.
Perhaps there is. Every time we buy something we are in effect voting for somebody to continue to produce it. Conversely, if we don’t buy it, sooner or later the producer will be faced with unsold stocks and declining profits, and think about changing to produce something else. It can take a long time, but it happens eventually. A hundred years ago many Devon blacksmiths, faced with declining numbers of horses, were converting their businesses into garages in order to benefit from the demands of the growing motor trade. And, of course, there is a connection between these economic and historical ideas and what goes on in the village shop. To begin with, every time you buy from it rather than driving to Bovey or Newton, you emit less carbon into the atmosphere. Every time you use the shop rather than ordering a supermarket delivery you cut down emissions from delivery vans. We try to buy from local suppliers to cut delivery miles. We have all sorts of ways of enabling you to tell suppliers that you want less plastic: shampoo and conditioner bars, bamboo toothbrushes, and beeswax food wrappers, for example. You can buy your milk in your own glass bottle (which we sell) rather than in a plastic container. We have brown paper bags for fruit and vegetables, and when you have unavoidably bought it, we provide a soft plastic recycling bin outside the shop. We recycle all the cardboard that comes into the shop, and many of our greetings cards are made from recycled paper. Our individual impact on climate change may be small, but there are many of us. Think global; shop local!
Paul Brassley
July 2023
Village Shop Talk
July is always a special month for the village shop, because it was on the 18th of July in 2012 that the shop opened. My own diary for that year noted that ‘we were reminded of how much we have missed seeing people by not meeting them in the shop’, since the old village shop had closed in 2008. The pleasure of seeing a familiar face on the other side of the counter, no matter which side of it one happens to be on, has once again become a normal part of life, as have those serendipitous meetings when we remember what we meant to tell somebody the last time we met. In the warm days of summer the shop also offers the facility to buy a drink, hot or cold, and sit outside for a quick (or even a leisurely) catch-up.
2012 was the year of the old Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and of course this year will be the first of the shop’s birthdays on which she is not on the throne. Late into the seventeenth century legal documents were still referring to ‘Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory’, even though she had died in 1603, and perhaps we shall in time refer to her successor, Elizabeth II, in similar terms. It was also the year of the London Olympics, the year that President Obama was re-elected, and perhaps less fortunately, the year Vladimir Putin was re-elected as president of Russia. And, as every year, the Ilsington Parish Summer Show was held in July, in that year on the Saturday before the shop opened.
Although we now live in a rather different, and perhaps more threatening world, the shop is still going and the Summer Show will still take place on the Saturday before its birthday. This year, in addition to the usual shop stall, we shall be running a barbeque, at which we shall be showing off the excellent range of sausages, burgers and other BBQ-able items that we sell in the shop. Come and see us, and perhaps have one of those serendipitous meetings that are all part of Ilsington’s retail experience, and remain unaffected by inflation.
Paul Brassley
June 2023
Village Shop Talk
The opening time of a shop represents a compromise between the desires of the customers, the shop owners, and the shop workers. The convenience of customers requires the shop to be open for as long as possible; the desire to maximise the volume of sales has the same effect, and interests the owners; but what about the quality of life of the shop workers? ‘Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do’, according to the fourth Commandment (and on the seventh thou shalt do thy paperwork, according to some pragmatic amendments of the rule). In the nineteenth century shops commonly kept very long hours and opened on every day except Sunday. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Shops Act attempted to regulate opening hours for the benefit of shop workers, so that readers of a certain age will remember the practice of half day closing, often on a Wednesday or Thursday. Apparently it still exists in some places. The current practice of allowing shops to open on Sunday was introduced in 1994, although the restricted hours imposed on that day apply only to shops with a trading area greater than 280 square metres. Smaller shops than that can open whenever they like. The logic behind that, presumably, is the greater likelihood of the shopworkers in small shops also being the owners, or members of the owner’s family.
All this is by way of background to recent changes in the opening hours of the village shop. Customers told us that sometimes they left work too late to get to the village shop before it closed. There is a simple solution to this problem, and it has the additional bonus of being likely to increase the volume of sales: the shop is now open longer. From Tuesday to Friday the shop is open from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. On Monday and Saturday it’s open as before, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Anyone who would like to help with the staffing of the shop during these extended hours will be very welcome.
Paul Brassley
May 2023
Village Shop Talk
At the risk of repetition, this month’s village shop page, like last month’s, is about the effects of inflation. But this time it’s more serious. Last month’s article pointed out that rising prices created more work for the shop staff, and that continues to be the case. They also affect our costs, not only the cost of the goods that we sell, but also electricity costs, no small item when we need air conditioning to keep the shop at a reasonable temperature and chillers and freezers to preserve meat, dairy products, ready meals, frozen vegetables and so on. There’s not much any of us, as individuals, can do about that, because we don’t set energy prices. However, we can make decisions about who gets our scarce cash (remember cash?) when we go shopping.
It’s hardly surprising that many people respond to inflation by shopping around for the best prices, and there are lots of alternative suppliers competing for the Ilsington spending power, not only the local shops but also the supermarket home delivery services. That has always been the case, but the competition is getting stiffer. We can now see the results in the village shop takings, which in a time of inflation should be rising. But they aren’t. During the last year they have been lower than usual, by between £60 and £70 per day. That may not seem much, but it amounts to about £2000 per month, which, with the increased operating costs, has resulted in the shop running at a loss, which hasn’t happened for a long time. At present we have the financial reserves to cope with that, but they won’t last for ever. And there is something that all of us, as individuals, can do about that. It’s very simple: use the shop more!
When the village hall crisis happened at the beginning of this year the response was immediate and successful. Lots of people recognised the importance of the hall to the village and came together to form a new committee. We need the same collective response to maintain the shop. We are very grateful for all the support we have been given in these difficult circumstances, but now we need even more of it.
Paul Brassley
April 2023
Village Shop Talk
The times they are a-changing, but then, times usually have done. What often matters is the speed at which they change. We usually cope more easily with gradual alterations than rapid changes. At present, however, the rapid changes in prices – mostly up, but a few down – are presenting a particular challenge to all of us, both as customers and as managers and volunteers in the village shop. As customers, the challenge is straightforward: how do you pay for the stuff, or manage without the stuff you can’t pay for? For those running the shop it’s a bit more complicated, even if it is less personally costly. To take one example: in late February and early March the prices of tomatoes and peppers went up because adverse weather conditions in Spain, and high heating costs for UK greenhouses, created a shortage. In consequence prices in the shop, which have normally been the same for red, yellow and green peppers, had to change to reflect the different costs of each, so red peppers had a different price from yellow, and so on.
Now this, you might think, is a trivial example, and in many ways you would be correct, but it’s worth exploring its consequences. Firstly the managers had to keep track of the various prices as they changed, often with each delivery. Then they had to change the configuration of the till to reflect the change from one pepper price to three, and find a way of making sure that the numerous volunteers who serve behind the counter were aware of the change. Fortunately there’s a newsletter to help with this. Then they had to look around to see if an alternative supplier might offer lower prices, and they found one in the shape of BDF Fresh Produce, a local firm that is now supplying our fruit, vegetables and milk, so that we have been able to bring some prices – milk, for example – down a bit. They also began to think about ways of keeping customers up to date with new developments, so you will now find that if you ask in the shop for the form to give us your email address, you will be able to receive up to date information about a-changing times, at least as they affect your village shop.
Paul Brassley
March 2023
Village Shop Talk
When does the year begin? My diary tells me that 2023 began on the first day of January, but in the great sweep of history that’s a relatively modern development, dating back only to 1752 in England (but earlier in Scotland). Before that the legal year began on the Feast of the Annunciation, or Lady Day, March 25th, nine months before Christmas Day. These are matters of convention. Time goes seamlessly on, and in earlier times people had different ideas of what might constitute a new beginning. The Roman writer Virgil saw the melting of Alpine snow in spring as the start of a new period of time, when the farming year began. The sixteenth-century English writer Thomas Tusser felt that it began in September, when the corn harvest was over, giving way to the next year’s cultivations. Many farm leases began on September 29th, Michaelmas Day.
Nevertheless, there remains a case for seeing the next month as marking a new start. We survived the rains and the cold of January, when the shelves of the shop gradually emptied to ease the labour of stocktaking, we bought the chocolates to sweeten our sweethearts on Valentine’s day, and now we are ready for March, when the snowdrops will give way to the daffodils, winter lions will yield to spring lambs, and the shop shelves will once again be full of old favourites and new discoveries. Having seen the success of our refillable milk bottle machine, Amy Luxton, our new manager, is exploring the possibility of introducing bulk containers for detergents, so that we can all contribute to reducing plastic waste by bringing in our old containers to be refilled with washing-up liquid, or laundry liquid, or other cleaning products. Do let her know what you think about the idea. There may also be a whiteboard near the entrance to the shop so that customers can comment on such innovations or make requests for the shop to stock goods that we don’t currently sell. This is, after all, a community shop, run by people who live in the village for our own benefit (and to meet the needs of visitors too), so what we all think is important.
Paul Brassley
February 2023
Village Shop Talk
As you read this article, at the end of January or the beginning of February, many of you will be aware that the village shop has a new manager. Katherine Bainbridge, who has done the job since the beginning of 2020, has decided that she needs to devote more time to her own family and business affairs, so this past Christmas was her last in charge of the shop. She has seen it through three turbulent years, most notably organising its response to the pandemic crisis (we never ran out of toilet rolls!) and the shop, and indeed the whole village, owes her an enormous debt of gratitude.
The new manager is Amy Luxton. You may already have met her, because she’s been working as a volunteer in the shop for the last few months. She has lived in Town Meadow with her husband for the last six years or so, and has two children, who go to the village school. She grew up in Scotland, in a small village in the Trossachs, north of Glasgow, and it was there that she had her first experience of the retail world, as she worked in a community shop not unlike ours. Although her parents are English (they too now live in Ilsington), you’ll pick up her Scottish accent. Initially she decided against retailing as a career; she trained as a vet in Edinburgh and spent 14 years in practice, latterly in Torquay. But recently she’s felt the need for a change, so when the chance came to apply for the shop manager’s job, she jumped at it.
Amy sees the shop as one of the focal points of the village, along with the village hall, pub, school and church. Her principal task, therefore, she sees as ensuring that it survives and thrives, not only as a source of goods and services but also as a community hub, a place to meet people and find out what’s happening in the village. So please welcome Amy as she changes her role from caring for animals to caring for the people who work in and use the village shop.
Paul Brassley
December 2022
Village Shop Talk
The idea of a midwinter holiday in order to celebrate the opening of the ski season is an old tradition. The Romans had Saturnalia, the Vikings had Yule, and of course we are all familiar with Christmas. Clearly people have for a long time felt that a break from work at a predictable time of the year, around the shortest day, is a good idea. But recognising that a holiday is a good idea provokes the opposite thought: why do we work at all?
Beyond the obvious answers – somebody has to produce the food, the shelter, the warmth, the entertainment and all the other things we need or want, and we work to get paid in order to buy them – there are other aspects of work that we might think about. Some people feel that their job gives them a sense of self-worth, or an identity, or status, in addition to the money that they earn. Some people can’t wait to retire, so that they can spend their time doing the things they really enjoy; others hate the idea of retirement. ‘Work is more fun than fun’, said Noel Coward, and as a singer, actor, and composer he packed a lot of work into his life. ‘I like work: it fascinates me … I could sit and look at it for hours’, wrote Jerome K. Jerome in his classic Three Men in a Boat, which encapsulates the opposite attitude. And some people find a great deal of fulfilment in working, like Noel Coward, just for the fun of it, for the sense of contributing to the local community, for the opportunities of meeting people, for the satisfaction of doing something different from the day job, or the career from which they have now retired. They are called village shop volunteers.
They operate the till, replenish the shelves, chat to their friends and neighbours who come into the shop and talk to the visitors who are agreeably surprised to find that they can get hot food and drinks when the pub is shut (and even when it isn’t). The till does the arithmetic, so it’s neither mentally nor physically demanding. But somebody has to do it. Could it be you?
If you think you might like to be more involved in our shop then please contact Katherine or Fiona on 01364 661788 or pop in for a chat.
Paul Brassley
November 2022
Village Shop Talk
By the time you read this the shop will have been redecorated. It may not be immediately apparent, because no great changes in the colour scheme are planned, but it will at least mean that the building is as fresh and clean as we would like it to be. Those of you who missed the second-hand (pre-read?) books that were packed away while we were preparing for the redecoration effort will find that they have reappeared in their usual place. It’s worth remembering that the books are only one of the services that the shop offers that not everyone is aware of. There is the post office on Monday and Friday mornings, the ordering service, which allows you to ask the staff to put together an order which you can then collect, the newspaper voucher scheme, which significantly reduces the cost of your daily paper, the wide selection of greetings cards, and the plastic recycling bin under the newspaper box by the door. It’s always worth looking around to see what’s new. It might be one of the colourful cloth shopping bags, or a bird box, or a bag of kindling. And of course with the approach of Christmas the normal range of stock will be expanded to include all those things which are not necessarily essential but remind us that a seasonal celebration just makes life better.
When the shop makes a surplus it means that there are funds to distribute to village organisations. It can’t happen every year, because there are always unforeseen costs that have to be covered, but this year the shop gave grants to the Twiglets playschool that operates in the village hall, to the Friends of Ilsington School, and to Fast Fiona’s keep fit club. We might see these grants as another of the services that the shop provides for the village, financed by the village itself. But perhaps the most important service is simply the existence of the shop, not only as a provider of goods and services, but also as a meeting place where you might see your old friends and acquaintances and encounter new ones. It’s free, and invaluable.
Paul Brassley
October 2022
Village Shop Talk
Everyone who uses the shop will be aware that the prices of many products have risen recently. Katherine, the shop manager, estimates that in the last few months the average increase has been about 12 per cent. Sadly, it’s inevitable, because the prices that we have to pay to our suppliers are rising too, and we can’t simply absorb such a large and consistent trend that has affected almost everything we sell.
Perhaps part of the reason why recent price increases have been so noticeable is that over the last ten years or so, since the shop has been in operation, we have become used to fairly stable prices, not only in the village shop but across the economy as a whole. On average, in the decade 2011-2020, prices rose by between 2 and 2.5 per cent each year, which was about the level of inflation that the Bank of England was supposed to allow. Those of us who are now old enough to collect our pensions may remember back to other decades when inflation was much higher. The stand-out decade was the 1970s, when annual rates could rise to as much as 20 per cent. That really concentrated the minds of those managing the economy, and by the 1990s prices were only rising at about 3 per cent each year. In 2021, however, the Retail Price Index rose by nearly 8 per cent, and in the first six months of this year it rose at an annual rate of about 13 per cent.
In one way, therefore, we’ve been here before, if not recently, although that’s little comfort. In the shop we’ve become very aware of these rising trends, and we are trying to do something about them. We’ve been exploring the use of different wholesalers, we’ve been substituting expensive brands with cheaper alternatives, and we now stock fewer slow-moving luxury products and expensive out-of –season fruit and vegetable lines. We’ve reduced stock levels to reduce wastage. But if, as a result of these measures, you can no longer find your favourite products, don’t forget that it’s always worth asking Katherine or Fiona if they can order something specially for you.
Paul Brassley
September 2022
Village Shop Talk
As the name suggests, running a community shop is a communal effort. Most obviously, there has to be somebody behind the counter to operate the till, but there’s much more to it than that. Somebody has to organise the volunteers to make sure that there is somebody behind the counter, somebody has to stack the shelves, somebody has to order the stuff that goes on them, and in some cases somebody has to go to the cash and carry to get the stuff in the first place. Somebody has to do the accounts, somebody has to keep the place clean, and somebody has to make sure that the volunteers know about any changes that might affect what they do. Somebody has to keep an eye on what’s selling well, on what might sell well if it were available, and on what doesn’t move from the shelves. And somebody has to be in overall charge of the whole operation.
That final somebody is the chair of the shop committee, and from 2018, until this summer, Su Wheaton did the job. It’s worth remembering that it’s a voluntary role. The shop does employ a manager and her deputy, who do many of the jobs mentioned already, but the final can-carrier is just as much a volunteer as all the others who help to keep the shop going. The difference is in the level of responsibility. Before she took over as chair Su was the vice chair, and she was involved in the shop project from its beginning, back in 2009. When she took over as chair from another of the originals, Alan Hobbs, she had a little time to get to grips with the job before the Covid crisis struck in March 2020, but then she and Katherine Bainbridge, the manager, had to guide the shop through the enormous challenges of the pandemic. So in many ways Su’s departure marks the end of an era for the shop. Since she said nothing of her intention to leave at the last AGM we did not have an opportunity to thank her for the immense amount of thought and effort that she has put in to making the shop what it is today. But we will gratefully remember everything she did.
Paul Brassley
July 2022
Village Shop Talk
After the Platinum Jubilee, this month sees the next event worth celebrating. Ten years ago, on 18th July 2012, the village shop opened. The shop will have a stall, with free tasters and give-aways, at the village show on Saturday the 16th, but the main commemoration will be on Monday the 18th.
Is the day and date of the shop’s opening the best one to remember? It has the great advantage that it’s a single memorable day, when a specific event happened. But it wouldn’t have happened unless other things had occurred earlier. Should we be celebrating the formation of the Community Shop Steering Group in December 2008, or the planning permission to build the new shop as an extension to the village hall, in 2009, or the award of the various grants and loans, especially the really big one, £179,000 of European Union money paid through the Rural Development Programme for England, which enabled the building to begin in February 2012?
The end of July also marks the end of Katherine Bainbridge’s term as shop manager. Katherine took on the job just as the shop was about to experience two of its most challenging years, because a month after she started the Covid pandemic hit us. Not only did it create difficulties in obtaining stock (remember the Great Toilet Paper Crisis?), but it also meant that many of the established volunteers, who were felt to belong to vulnerable groups, could no longer work in the shop. Katherine saw us through that critical period. She made sure that the shelves were kept full and new volunteers were recruited. She improved that layout and introduced numerous new lines and new approaches to packaging, most notably the machine in the corner that supplies milk to refillable bottles. And she has done it all with tremendous energy and good humour so that most of us remain mercifully unaware of the constant series of difficulties that she’s had to overcome. She’s now pulling back to spend more time on her family’s business, but we shall always remain grateful for what she’s done. The new manager is Toria Summers, and she will be doing her training in the shop over the next few weeks, so please say hello to her if you meet her there.
Paul Brassley
June 2022
Village Shop Talk
After the last couple of years we don’t need much of an excuse to have fun if we can find something to celebrate, and this year gives us two important anniversaries to commemorate. The first, which we shall be celebrating this month, is the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. King George VI was found dead in his bed at 7.30 a.m on 6 February 1952, so the Queen’s reign began at that moment. Her coronation took place the following year, on 2nd June, a cold rainy day in London, but drier, with sunny spells, in south-west England, although there was still a cold northerly wind. Since February is hardly the month for street parties it makes much more sense to have one in June, and our village party, to be held on the road between the pub and the village hall, begins at mid-day on Sunday 5th. The shop will be doing the barbeque and providing free teas and coffees in the hall. Everyone is invited to come along and bring a cake or a salad to share, so don’t forget that you will be able to find the ingredients for both in the shop. Given the culinary talent in the parish there should be lots of good things to look forward to. Let’s hope the weather is warmer than it was for the coronation.
The second anniversary arrives next month, when the shop will be exactly ten years old. We shall have a stall at the flower show, with balloons, free tasters, and other good things, and cake for all comers at the shop two days later on the precise anniversary, Monday 18th July. Perhaps we might argue that the shop represents in a small way, and locally, the same thing that the Queen’s Jubilee represents nationally. If the Queen is a living symbol of the community of the United Kingdom, and more widely of the Commonwealth, is it too far-fetched to see the shop, like those other village institutions the church, the school, the playing fields, and the pub, as an active working symbol of the local community? And just as the Queen has carried on over seventy years of dramatic political, social and cultural change, so our local community came together ten years ago to ensure that an important local institution carried on too.
Paul Brassley
May 2022
Village Shop Talk
It’s difficult to be a pessimist in May. Whether April has been showery or not, there will be flowers in the hedge banks as stitchwort and jack-by-the-hedge show their white petals among the grass, the weather will be getting warmer, and there will be a Bank Holiday on the first Monday. The fresh green of the trees and the grass tells us that Spring is with us. It’s something that poets have recognised since Chaucer, one of whose characters was ‘as fresh as is the month of May’, and that prolific versifier Anonymous referred to ‘the merry month of May’, and reminded us that ‘a swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay’.
And so in the shop the accent this month is on enjoyment. Even before you go through the door you will see the display of Graham’s plants, and once inside you will remember that the milk dispenser has changed position slightly to allow for the appearance of the ice cream freezer, for those days when only a Magnum, or something like it, will do. If you might be tempted to give your dog the remains of your ice cream, resist! Ordinary ice creams are not good for dogs. But there is a solution if those big pleading eyes are irresistible, and it’s Scoop’s ice cream for hot dogs. It’s formulated to suit their digestions, with less lactose and fat, and added glucosamine and hemp oil to lubricate their joints and put a gloss on their coats. It’s in the freezer now, and if you feel that a treat for the dog has to be matched by one for yourself, don’t forget that we have a new range of Solent chocolate in lots of different flavours.
And for later in summer, a couple of dates for your diary: the shop will be having a barbeque and providing tea and coffee at the Jubilee street party on Sunday 5 June, when we can all get together to celebrate the Queen’s seventy years on the throne in the service of the country. The following month the shop AGM will be on 13 July in the village hall.
Paul Brassley
April 2022
Village Shop Talk
‘April is the cruellest month’, wrote T.S.Eliot, at the beginning of his long and complex poem The Waste Land, which was first published exactly one hundred years ago this year. Like other writers and artists of those post-First World War years, he was perhaps consciously rejecting what had been the usual ways of thinking before the war. ‘Oh to be in England / Now that April’s there’ were Robert Browning’s Home Thoughts From Abroad, and at the end of the fourteenth century Chaucer began his Canterbury Tales by noting the ‘sweet showers’ of April, piercing the drought of March.
Whether or not March turns out to have been dry this year, and whether for good or ill, April is clearly a month that marks change. The clocks have gone forward to summer time, it’s lighter in the evenings, the weather will be getting gradually warmer, the lambs around the parish are welcoming the spring grass, the sound of the lawn mower is heard in the land, and we shall have the Easter break. I consulted my encyclopaedia (does anyone else still possess such a book in the Age of Google?) to remind myself that, according to an Act of Parliament of 1752, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox. So now you know exactly when it will be. The shop will, as usual, be marking it by selling the usual extensive range of Easter cards, Easter eggs, hot cross buns, and simnel cakes. Graham the postman’s range of plants, on sale outside the front of the shop, will be burgeoning.
Is it too fanciful to see the shop as a kind of representative of human life? Most of the time the bulk of the goods on sale are there for our everyday existence, giving us our daily bread, and something to go with it. But each year is marked by high points and celebrations, changes and commemorations, and the goods on sale in the shop change to reflect our passage through time. In April, what you will find in the shop signals the end of winter, the presence of spring, and the coming of summer.
Paul Brassley
March 2022
Village Shop Talk
It is a regrettable but inescapable fact that prices are rising, and are predicted to rise still further. It shows in the Consumer Price Index, which measures price changes over hundreds of products and services, from food to fuel and housing to hotels. After rising at about two per cent or so each year for a long time, prices at Christmas 2021 were 5.4 per cent higher than they had been the previous Christmas. And one of the bigger increases came in food prices.
What matters to people living in Ilsington is not so much what is happening to national average food prices, but how prices are changing in the local shops from which they buy their food. If these shops are local branches of the big national food retailers they are likely to reflect the national picture, although they can choose to make differences in detail. A rather brief and unscientific survey of two such shops in early February revealed that one had cheaper canned tomatoes and more expensive vanilla ice cream than the other, but otherwise their prices for staples such as rice, pasta, baked beans, toilet paper and milk were pretty similar. However, we would expect that the village shop, which operates on a vastly smaller scale than these national firms, might be more expensive. Whereas the ten retail chains that dominate the grocery market can make their own pricing decisions, the village shop often has to charge the price determined by our suppliers. Given that, it would not be surprising to find that village shop prices are higher than those in the national chains.
But, it turns out, not that much higher. If you bought basmati rice, spaghetti, a can of baked beans and one of tomatoes, 80 tea bags, a jar of instant coffee, two pints of milk, vanilla ice cream, crisps and a pot of yoghurt in the village shop it would cost £18.10; a local supermarket branch would charge you £16.70 for the same products. The difference is less than ten per cent, and think of the time and petrol you save by shopping in the village, not to mention the chance of meeting old friends and neighbours, and meeting new ones. And that’s worth a lot.
Paul Brassley
February 2022
Village Shop Talk
Anyone who has ever played rugby, or even watched it, will be familiar with the idea of the hospital pass. It’s not a quick way of finding the person you want to visit, still less a free entry to the car park. It happens, in rugby, when somebody passes you the ball just as an opponent is about to crash into you with the kind of force that might leave you needing medical attention. It’s an arresting image, so much so that it’s gone beyond the sports field to become a metaphor for taking on a task just as an enormous and unexpected challenge erupts on to the scene. And it occurred to me when I looked back to the Shop Talk article for February 2020, which introduced Katherine Bainbridge as the new shop manager.
We now know that what we began by calling the Corona virus pandemic had been spreading across the world since the end of 2019, although by the following February we still had little idea of the extent to which it would affect our everyday lives. Six weeks later all that had changed. Infections were rife in northern Italy, the French government had closed down the cafes and restaurants in Paris, there were fights in supermarkets over loo rolls, people over 70 were being told to isolate themselves, and by the end of March we were getting used to the idea of wearing masks in Ilsington. Giving a new shop manager the job of responding to all that surely qualifies as a hospital pass.
Anyone who saw all the boxes of orders lined up in the shop a day or so before Christmas 2021 began could see how triumphantly Katherine and her staff have responded to the challenges of the last two years. The shop did not fail, as some shops did. It didn’t even run out of toilet paper. The older volunteers, who could no longer work behind the counter, have been replaced by new recruits (more are always welcome!). Deliveries have been arranged for isolating customers. New suppliers and products have been found. The shop has not only survived, it has thrived. Quite a response to a hospital pass!
Paul Brassley
Christmas 2021
Village Shop Talk
There is more to December than Christmas. On the first of the month, in the year 1135, for example, King Henry I died after eating a surfeit of lampreys, a cautionary tale which we might do well to remember for the rest of the month. King Edward VIII, who could be equally self-indulgent, found an easier way out by abdicating on 11th December 1936. On the 27th, in 1831, HMS Beagle left Devonport carrying Charles Darwin on the voyage that would lead him to his conclusions about the origin of species, and on the 30th in 1879 the first performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance was staged in the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton. More significant than any of these events, however, for most of us, was the decision taken in 440 AD to fix December 25th as the date of Christmas.
Since September, if not before, the shop staff have been planning and ordering all manner of good things to ensure that your Christmas arrangements will not be spoiled for a lack of food and drink, or presents and cards. It will help if you can pre-order essentials such as turkeys, geese, sausages, bacon, sprouts, potatoes and so on; look for details of how to do so in the shop or ask the staff. You will also be able to order Christmas hampers containing your own selection of locally-produced food and alcohol from the wide range available in the shop.
To get you into the party mood there will be late-night (or perhaps more accurately early evening) shopping on Wednesday December 15th from 6 to 8 pm, with mulled wine and mince pies available. Outside, around the Christmas tree, illuminated by fairy lights, there will be a band and a choir to serenade you with carols. If you haven’t begun to plan your Christmas by then (and is it really necessary to start any earlier?) this will be a great opportunity to put your mind to all things festive. And just to reassure you, the shop does not sell any products containing lampreys, so you should be quite safe.
Katherine and the committee wish all our wonderful volunteers and customers a happy Christmas and a happy and healthy 2022.
Paul Brassley
October 2021
Village Shop Talk
The late Duke of Edinburgh was noted for his longevity and his particular sense of humour, but he may well be remembered, in years to come and by people still unborn in his lifetime, for the ‘D of E’, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. It was established in 1956, and its programmes, or their equivalents, now run in 144 countries across the world. One of the elements of the scheme is volunteering, and in the last year for which figures are available D of E candidates in the UK provided nearly two million hours of voluntary effort. The village shop was fortunate in the last few months in securing some of those hours, in the shape of three young people who worked in the shop as part of their Award programme. They did an excellent job, and everybody associated with the shop is very grateful to them.
Older volunteers in the community do not receive any formal award, but that does not mean that their efforts go unrecognised. Parish councils, churches, schools, conservation organisations, arts organisations ….. the list is long, and they all depend upon volunteers. The village shop is no exception. Apart from the manager and her deputy it is entirely run by volunteers. Many voluntary organisations recognise something like a ten year rule: for one reason or another, volunteers don’t last for ever. Their circumstances change, they develop other interests, they move house or job, they have children, or their children have children, and so on. Anyone who uses the shop will realise that there are new faces behind the counter that were not there a couple of years ago.
But more new faces are urgently needed. It’s important to recognise that the shop offers lots of other volunteering opportunities other than working on the till. There are shelves to be filled, orders to be unpacked, and stocks to be checked. If you have an hour or two to spare every so often, you can help. You won’t get a gold award, or a silver or bronze, but you will keep an important part of the village going.
Paul Brassley
September 2021
Village Shop Talk
A bicycle only works if you keep moving forwards, but once you are moving forwards you don’t think about it. And bicycles change over time as new technologies are introduced. Modern bikes are obviously very different from the penny-farthings of the nineteenth century, but their brakes and gears are also different from those I grew up with fifty or sixty years ago, even if they haven’t gone as far as incorporating an electric motor.
A shop is a bit like a bicycle. It has to keep moving forwards, introducing new products and new technologies to reflect the requirements of today’s consumer, but many, perhaps most of us, don’t think about it when we do our everyday shopping. We know where the things we usually buy are to be found in the shop, and our eye slides over any small changes. At least, mine does. I couldn’t avoid a big change such as the new chillers with their expanded range of vegetables, dips, etc, but the other day I took the time to look around, and realised that there were several new products that reflect, the way in which society is changing. Take the card display: you might notice that Whistlefish cards don’t have plastic wrappers. In the corner, above the display of soaps, oils, and so on from the Dartmoor Soap Company, you will find beeswax wraps that do the same job as clingfilm, and over on the hardware shelf there are paper sandwich bags that will do the same job as plastic bags. Small changes, yes, but reflecting the realisation that society as a whole is adding plastic to the environment more quickly than the environment can process it, so that any way in which we can remove plastic from the beginning of the cycle is worth thinking about.
I also found a new display of gluten-free and vegan foods, and I would have found a new selection of frozen ready meals, but I discovered that the freezers had broken down. Katherine, the shop manager, tells me that with a bit of luck they should be replaced by the time you read this article; it’s only a wobble in the bicycle’s progress.
Paul Brassley
August 2021
Village Shop Talk
Provided she has had a calf in the last nine months or so, it is not difficult to get milk out of a cow, although the first time I tried the cow kicked me in the stomach. Equally, it is not difficult to get milk out of the fridge. The tricky bit comes between the two. Milk is perishable and relatively heavy in relation to its value, and consequently expensive to transport. Over the last 150 years, several new technologies have been employed to solve these problems.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, if you lived in the country but had no cow of your own you would take a jug to a neighbouring dairy farm. Urban residents would get their milk from cows kept in dairies in the middle of towns and cities. In the 1860s an outbreak of rinderpest, killing these town dairy cows, coincided with the expansion of the railway network, so that it became possible to send milk by train from the country to the town. That was the beginning of the whole infrastructure of dairy companies, the Milk Marketing Board, daily milk deliveries, pasteurisation, and returnable glass milk bottles that ensured the availability of fresh, disease-free, unadulterated milk at a time when few households had refrigerators. Once most homes had one, and often a freezer too, daily deliveries became less important. Supermarkets became involved, using lightweight plastic containers, and many consumers felt that semi-skimmed was a healthier option than full-cream milk, but recycling the plastic efficiently became a major concern.
As many customers will have seen, the village shop has now installed new technology to overcome this latest problem, as customers fill their own bottle (re-usable bottles are available for £1) from the machine at the back of the shop. A new supply goes into the machine every day, so that the milk is fresher than before. (Milk in two-litre plastic containers will still be available in the chiller.) All this might seem like a return to the older system, but it’s the next exciting step forward in getting fresh clean milk from the cow to the consumer without the need for polluting plastic.
Paul Brassley
July 2021
Village Shop Talk
Time is continuous, but we like to parcel it out in artificial divisions. The day and the year are based on natural phenomena; every other division of time is artificial. Then, having constructed hours, minutes, weeks, months, decades, centuries, and so on, we make further distinctions, between, for example, weekdays and weekends, and we do things at the weekend that we would not do during the week. We also break up the year. If we are schoolchildren or parents our year is divided into school terms and half terms, separated by longer or shorter holidays. Even without terms we have points in the year that we can look forward to or back on, like calendar punctuation marks: birthdays, Christmas, Easter, bank holidays, our summer holidays, increasingly, perhaps, our winter holidays, or some annual event like the Glastonbury festival. One of the additional pressures of the Covid pandemic has been that some of these punctuation marks have been missing, as events and holiday travel have been cancelled. Last year the parish Summer Show, which for many of us is a kind of marker of the middle of summer, had to be cancelled. It began in 1910, and there have only been sixteen years without a show in more than a century. But this year, unless there is some serious change in the control of the pandemic between the time of writing this article and the time you read it, the 95th show will take place, on 17 July.
It’s always an important event for the shop and we have a stall to show off our exciting produce, with free tasters too, of course! You can pick up your show programme from the shop, which is vital if you are planning on exhibiting anything, because it contains your entry form. Some of your vegetable entries might have begun life as the plants you bought from the shop, and if you are thinking of entering any of the cookery classes we should be able to supply most of the ingredients you need (with the exception of no. 78 – hedgerow cordial!). Let us know if it’s something unusual, and we’ll see what we can do.
Paul Brassley
June 2021
Village Shop Talk
Apparently, merchandising experts work out the effect on sales of putting supermarket items on shelves at different heights. I suppose it’s obvious when you think about it. Don’t put sweets so high up that children can’t see them (this is about sales, not health). Thinking further, I realise that when I go into the village shop I have a rough idea of where the things that I regularly buy are kept, and my eye slides over much of the rest. So in case anyone else is like me, it’s time to recall the full range of what the shop offers.
First, the fresh stuff: vegetables, fruit, meat, cheese, yoghurt and other dairy products. Then the frozen foods: fruit and veg again, fish, meat, ice cream, pizzas and other ready meals. All the bakery products: bread in several varieties, cakes (keep a lookout for those from one of our latest suppliers, Chloe’s Bakes of Ashburton), croissants, biscuits. The groceries, in the form of tea, coffee, enticing spices, rice of several kinds, noodles, numerous flours and other necessities for home baking, sweets and chocolates, wines, beers, ciders, bottled water and soft drinks.
Then there are articles that you can’t eat or drink: the cleaning materials, to clean both you and your house; the cards, and the gifts to go with them, such as towels, soaps, mugs, and things in nice tins, the pre-read books to exchange, or buy for just 50p, the DVD lending library, the newspapers and magazines, and the plants that Graham the postman produces.
Speaking of whom, remember that the shop sells services as well as physical objects. The Post Office is open on Monday (9 to 1 pm) and Friday (9 to 11 am) mornings, stamps can be bought in the shop at other times, we can make you a cup of tea or coffee, cashback is available if you’ve spent more than £5, you can order seafood every week, there’s a click and collect service, a delivery service, local information on the noticeboard and on the counter (look for the Dartmoor Way leaflets) and finally, and perhaps most important, there are people to talk to. Priceless.
Paul Brassley
May 2021
Village Shop Talk
We are frequently told that many areas of human behaviour are determined by what worked for the survival of our distant ancestors as they roamed the Eurasian plains and woods hundreds of thousands of years ago, long before the development of agriculture. In current computer-age terms, we behave as we are ‘hard-wired’ to do. In the depths of winter, we huddle round the fire at the back of the cave and listen to the storyteller (read central heating and The Archers or Eastenders or Line of Duty). Then as the days become warmer and buds become leaves and flowers, we emerge ever more frequently from the cave. We enjoy the warmth of the sun on our skin. We enjoy the taste of fresh green leaves, we begin to plan hunting trips (read holiday travel). We become creatures of the outdoors.
May is the month when we can be a little more certain that this will happen. The uncertainties of March and April weather should be over and the lockdown regulations will have eased a little (although don’t plan a hunting trip abroad). Those of us who are lucky enough to have a garden will remember that Graham the postman will be bringing lots of colourful plants to the shop to transfer to the flower beds. There are two bank holidays this month, which with a bit of luck should mean two extra opportunities for a picnic or barbecue. Don’t forget that the shop sells all the fresh and cooked meats, cheeses, salads, snacks, cakes and biscuits, wines, beers and so on that you could possibly want for your alfresco dining experience.
For those who wish to venture a little further afield, while still observing Covid regulations, keep a lookout for a promised new publication on The Dartmoor Way. It’s a 200-mile cycling and walking route round Dartmoor – not surprisingly, part of it goes through the parish – and we are expecting a new guide to be published shortly. It will, of course, be on sale in the shop. But if you don’t feel that active, grab a book from the back of the shop and just sit in the May sunshine and read.
Paul Brassley
April 2021
Village Shop Talk
‘You can’t always get what you want’, sang the Rolling Stones, if I remember correctly, ‘but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need’. The distinction between needs and wants may not have meant much to our prehistoric ancestors, gathering much of their food from a wide range of roots, fruits, and seeds, but the way they cracked open bones to get at the marrow suggests that they wanted more fats and proteins than a plant diet provided. In our own time the kinds of products that we are asked to donate to the food bank mostly reflect what people need, but we also recognize that sometimes people need a luxury to help them feel better. Think about the difference in price between a litre of water, without which you would die, and a litre of diamonds, that you wouldn’t want to eat or drink. A farmer I knew once stopped producing food and made more money by renting out his barns as practice spaces for rock bands. ‘People will spend a lot more on what they don’t need than on what they do’, he observed.
As adults, we make this distinction between wants and needs every time we visit the village shop. Children, of course, know that they absolutely need what they want. Perhaps developing a sense of the difference between the two is part of growing up. Some of the things that the shop sells are very obviously about needs. Apart from basic foodstuffs, household cleaning products are an example, and the shop is increasing its range of environmentally-friendly items. Some people will need to take advantage of the shop’s collection and delivery services (see the website for details), while others need gluten-free products for health reasons, and again that range has become wider recently. But of course much of our shopping that goes beyond our basic needs gives us pleasure, and that’s why you will find new wines being added every month to what is already an extensive selection, and a variety of cards and chocolate eggs to help you celebrate Easter on the first weekend of this month. Give yourself a treat; it’s what you need.
Paul Brassley
March 2021
Village Shop Talk
The fourth Sunday in Lent falls on the 14th of March this year. It is traditionally celebrated as Mothering Sunday, the tradition being that children give small presents, often flowers, to their mothers. Since the Gospel for the day is the story of the feeding of the five thousand it also became associated with a respite from the Lenten fast, a day on which people ate special buns and cakes such as Simnel cake. The word comes from the Old French word for fine flour, ‘seminel’. Robert Herrick, the poet (‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’) and vicar of Dean Prior in the seventeenth century, wrote ‘I’ll to thee a simnel bring / ‘Gainst thou goes a-mothering’. One might perhaps wonder how much mothers would welcome the idea of baking special cakes and feeding what might seem like five thousand.
Entertaining lots of people is not going to be a possibility this year, but for those special people within your bubble don’t forget that the village shop can provide all sorts of high-quality ingredients from local suppliers to stimulate your culinary ambitions: a range of meat from Cox and Laflin, fish from Britannia Fish, and seafood from Teign Shellfish. If inspiration is needed, there is a steady turnover of recipe ideas on the noticeboard outside the shop, using ingredients that you can find within. Don’t forget the click and collect service: you can email the shop or telephone (01364 661788) with your order and it will be boxed up for you to collect. If you live within a two mile radius and need to self-isolate, the shop can arrange to have your order delivered to you. And on the subject of deliveries, those of us who benefit from it would like to thank those heroic young people who turn out early every morning, no matter what the weather, to deliver newspapers round the village. It’s also worth pointing out that some of the volunteers who normally serve in the shop are having to self-isolate, so there is an urgent need for other volunteers to replace them. These are all aspects of what the shop is about: the local community supporting itself.
Paul Brassley
February 2021
Village Shop Talk
Part of the pleasure in life, for many people, comes from novelty: new friends, new sensations, new tastes, new sights, new clothes, new places. But we also like what we are used to having – a favourite jersey, a well-known walk, old friends, familiar food. Humans are an inventive species, so when we can’t get what we are used to having, especially when things are difficult, we look for alternatives. Sometimes the substitutes become part of everyday life, and we forget that they began as replacements for the normal but temporarily unobtainable.
For example, think about some of the products that you are used to seeing in the village shop. Biscuits began as a substitute for bread, used by sailors on long voyages. Margarine, according to one of my reference books, was invented in France in 1869, at a time of very high butter prices. The original version was made from a mixture of refined beef fat, skimmed milk, and water, which formed a white mass with a pearly sheen. Hence the name ‘margarine’ after margarites, the Greek word for pearl. You may be relieved to know that the modern process is different. The new technologies that were developed to feed troops in the Second World War gave us the bags of frozen vegetables, canned fruit juices, instant coffee, dried soup powders, and ready meals that we now take for granted. More recently changing attitudes to drinking alcohol have resulted in the production of a range of alcohol-free beers and lagers (look for Becks Blue in the shop if you are interested).
What will remain after the current pandemic is over? Zoom meetings and more working from home seem like good bets. The village shop’s system of pre-ordering, by telephone or email, especially for bread and fresh vegetables, will probably continue. And don’t forget that there is a click and collect system that allows you to pick up your order from outside the shop. Whether the present home delivery option will still be needed remains to be seen. But it would be nice to think that the pre-Christmas surge in sales that we’ve just seen will be repeated next year.
Paul Brassley
December 2020
Village Shop Talk
Eighty years ago, when the second wartime Christmas came round, turkeys were expensive, if you could find one at all, and many of the traditional ingredients of Christmas puddings, such as dried fruits, were simply unobtainable. Subsequent wartime Christmases were made even more difficult because rationing was in force, although the Ministry of Food sometimes made extra rations of tea, or suet, or sugar available. For many it was a chance to stop listening to the news and forget about the war for a day or so. Most people wanted to preserve a national tradition and make Christmas as normal as possible, especially if they had children. They exercised their ingenuity in finding substitutes for things that were unavailable. Women’s magazines produced recipes for a substitute marzipan made from soya flour, cocoa, and almond essence, and an eggless Christmas pudding using grated potatoes and carrots. An alternative was a bread pudding boiled for six hours to make it look like the real thing.
The pressures on the Christmas that we shall celebrate this year are different, but there are parallels with those wartime Christmases. We are unlikely to have difficulty in finding the ingredients for the pudding, and we shall be able to pre-order turkeys, meat boxes and hampers from the village shop, but if restrictions on getting together are still in force Christmas parties may be smaller than usual. Nevertheless we may welcome an opportunity to avoid the news and have a break from unpleasant reality, and those of us with children will want to make life as normal as possible for them. We may face the same separation from friends and family that people faced eighty years ago, but at least we will still be able to send them presents. The shop will have a wide range of gifts, from local whiskies, gins and cheeses, to mugs, tea towels and tankards. It will be open until 8 pm (and serving mulled wine!) on Tuesdays in December, and for post-Christmas opening times please see the website. And, as in the war, we may comfort ourselves with the thought that it may all be over by next Christmas.
Paul Brassley
October 2020
Village Shop Talk
On 8th July the shop celebrated its 8th birthday by holding a delightful tea party in the Millennium Garden organised by the manager Katherine, committee members and volunteers. There were a lot of new faces at the party and coronavirus was partly responsible for that as many of the original volunteers are over seventy and so had to cease working behind the counter. But we are so lucky to have such a reactive community and as fast as gaps appeared in the volunteer rota, they were filled by new volunteers who found that they could no longer travel to work outside the village and so gladly devoted more time to the shop. It is wonderful to welcome so many new people to the shop family! There is always a call for new volunteers for all manner of tasks, not just serving in the shop, so do contact Katherine if you would like to know more about those opportunities.
Among the latest developments two new posts have been created – Fiona Coles will be working on display areas and Anne Villis and Alison Gilbert are taking responsibility for marketing and promotion. You will find a survey form on the counter requesting information about how our customers make their decisions about shopping as it’s important to provide the products and services that everyone wants. The form is straightforward and only takes a few minutes to complete. Help the shop with this, and they will be able to help you even more!
Katherine is planning a cook book based on recipes suggested by local people. So pick a few of your favourites and send them to her to include in the book. There will be a recipe of the month published in the parish magazine and displayed on the shop notice board.
And it’s worth remembering that the click and collect service introduced at the onset of Covid is still operating. Ring up on 661788 or email ilsingtonvillageshop@btconnect.com by 11.00 a.m. the day before to place your order, and pick it up the following morning.
Angela and Paul Brassley
September 2020
Village Shop Talk
In common with every other shop in the country, the village shop now requires customers to wear a mask while they are in the building. Presumably the last time an external threat affected the way we looked or dressed was eighty years ago. During the Second World War people were issued with a gas mask, which came in a little cardboard box and had to be carried at all times. Far longer ago, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the bubonic plague, or black death, was a threat that kept on returning, and the doctors of the time, who had to be in contact with its victims, wore masks shaped like beaks filled with sweet herbs and spices. The theory was that these would purify the air they breathed and so prevent infection. Since the plague was spread by the bite of an infected flea it wasn’t a very effective theory. Surgical masks worn by operating theatre teams, the oxygen masks worn by fighter pilots, and those yellow plastic masks that will drop down when you have cause to wonder if your flight will be more exciting than you hoped are all designed to cover your nose and mouth while leaving your eyes visible. Highwaymen, revellers at masked balls, and performers in masques, on the other hand, leave the mouth visible but cover the area around the eyes, hoping that they will consequently become unrecognisable.
All of which raises some interesting questions. Which part of the face do we concentrate on when recognising somebody else? When I wear a mask, does my face become expressionless? One of the assistants in the shop told me that she could tell when I was smiling by looking at my eyes. Was she particularly observant, or is that something we do all the time? If the pandemic continues for a long time will we begin to recognize people by their masks? The shop sells masks, and some of the talented needlewomen in the village have made some very effective ones. Should we encourage them to offer a bespoke service for individualised masks? And how long will it be before we can go back to full facial exposure?
Paul Brassley
July 2020
Village Shop Talk
Lockdown has inspired many of us to get creative in our gardens and allotments and those of us lucky enough to have them have been digging, planting, potting, weeding, mowing, pruning and generally upgrading and organising our patches. In these unusual and limiting times it’s been soothing to have such a rewarding outdoor pursuit and we would probably all agree with the late 19th/early 20th century British horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll when she says “I hold the firm belief that the purpose of a garden is to give happiness and repose of mind”. Repose of mind is certainly what we need in these Covid-dominated times.
We are lucky in that the southwest is one of the least affected regions by the virus. We are also lucky to have lots of garden centres in the area. But you only have to pop down to the village shop to find our very own mini garden centre. Our postie Graham Westlake is an expert gardener and produces a wide range of flowers and vegetables for us to buy at very reasonable prices. He nurtures seeds and plugs, brings them on, and sells the individual plants at numerous stalls in the southwest. Throughout the spring and early summer he has been supplying us with all sorts of plants starting with herbs, moving on to bedding plants like petunias, geraniums and pansies. Vegetables have included runner beans, tomatoes and cucumbers, and this month he will be selling a good range of perennials. Check with him as to what plants might be on offer in the coming weeks.
Plants sell well in the village shop thanks to Graham’s twice weekly deliveries when he comes to run the Post Office on Mondays and Fridays. It adds another dimension to our services and provides a welcoming display as you come up the steps.
So while you’re waiting in the queue have a good look and you may well find exactly what you need for that odd corner of the garden. Or a replacement for a plant that has been slaughtered by slugs. Or pecked at by pigeons. Or, in our lovely rural area, demolished by deer.
Angela Brassley
June 2020
Village Shop Talk
One online retailer, the biggest and best-known, recently reported a 26 per cent increase in sales, but noted that the increased costs needed to keep its staff safe would wipe out the next quarter’s profit. Its share price fell as a result.
Community shops don’t operate on that scale, but they too have found that the Coronavirus pandemic presents them with some of the same problems and opportunities as their bigger competitors. A quick telephone survey of half a dozen community shops in Devon revealed much the same story from most of them. They all reported increased takings, in some cases by about 20 per cent, in one by as much as 70 per cent. They all found that they had new customers, or that previously occasional customers had become regulars, while regulars were often buying more. And most of them were running delivery services. Broadhempston, in fact, is expanding deliveries from the village to more outlying areas. But there have been problems. Community shops are dependent upon volunteers, many of whom are over 70 years old and so in a vulnerable group: 60 per cent of Spreyton’s volunteers fell into that category, and most others have been affected to some extent. But the good news is that in many cases new volunteers have appeared. Most shops found that their usual suppliers had difficulty in providing some products – flour, tinned tomatoes and paracetamol were most commonly mentioned – but some hard work by the manager often meant that they could find new suppliers.
To judge from this small sample, Ilsington’s shop is pretty typical: takings up, with new customers, new staff and suppliers, and a delivery and collection system. But there’s more to the shop than just maintaining its service. It now has River Teign seafood being delivered every Tuesday, local meats on Wednesday, and each week a variety of lettuces from an organic salad supplier in Ashburton. Finally, don’t forget that the third Sunday in June is Fathers’ Day, and that various gifts for men, some of which may contain malted barley and hops, will be available in the shop.
Paul Brassley
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May 2020
Village Shop Talk
This article is being written at the beginning of April, and it would be courageous (in the sense that Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister used the word, meaning foolish) to predict that life in Ilsington Parish will be absolutely unaltered by the time you read these words at the end of the month. What is certain is that it has changed enormously since the middle of March. Individual families have obviously been affected, together with the church, the school, the pubs and hotels, and of course the shop. But whereas those other centres of community life have been forced to restrict or cease their activities, the Village Shop is busier than ever.
It’s not difficult to see why. One might see the Coronavirus emergency as snow that takes a long time to melt. Back at the beginning of March 2018 the village was cut off by the snow, unless you had a four-wheel drive vehicle, for about three days. It produced a big rise in the shop’s sales for the month, as it was the only source of food for many people. We are seeing the same thing now. One customer described the shop as ‘an absolute lifeline’, because it has not run out of basic products as some of the larger local supermarkets have. This is because our Village Shop is a Community Shop. Two of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of ‘community’ are ‘a body of people living in the same locality’ and ‘life in association with others’. Our customers are aware that their actions will affect the welfare of their friends and neighbours. Our volunteers and staff are aware that having close business connections with local suppliers means that in times of trouble those suppliers go out of their way to support us. Our community is aware that when people are isolated and in need, the most basic comforts can be delivered in a grocery bag.
Adapting to this strange isolated world has required a tremendous effort by Katherine the manager and her volunteer staff, some of whom are new to the job. They are now packing orders received by email, and running a delivery service for people within a two-mile radius who have to self-isolate. That’s the situation at the beginning of April; www.ilsingtonvillageshop.co.uk will keep you up to date with any changes.
Paul Brassley
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April 2020
Village Shop Talk
As many readers of this magazine will know, scholars are divided over what Aristotle meant by the word ‘change’. Some argue that he said it was an actual potentiality; others that it was the actualizing of a potentiality. While it may be hardly surprising that such a radical difference could set academics at each other’s throats, it is not helpful. Perhaps it would be better to rely upon more modern thinkers. In 1546, for example, John Heywood suggested that ‘change of pasture maketh fat calves’, which is comforting for cattle producers but worrying for fashion models. Comparatively recently, in 1853, R.C.Trench contended that ‘A man will never change his mind if he has no mind to change’, and one can only point out the relevance of his observation to our own era.
These ruminations were provoked by a conversation with Katherine Bainbridge, who took over as manager of the village shop in February. Inevitably, she wishes to make some changes. Already regular customers will have noticed that there was a taster morning for jams and pickles, and as a result the shop will be stocking a range of these from The Bay Tree food company, which is based in Ivybridge. Another local supplier, the butchers Cox and Lafflin, will now be ensuring that there is more fresh meat available at the beginning of the week, and as well as stocking Vicky’s bread, from Cornwall, the shop will also have delicious cakes and flapjacks from the same bakery. It’s worth remembering that you can enjoy these with a hot drink in the seating area at the back of the shop. It’s the only place in the village where you can enjoy tea and cakes under cover during the winter, but of course now that the warmer weather is scheduled to re-appear, so will the outside seating area. Look out too for an expanded range of stationery.
One thing that isn’t going to change is the presence of volunteers behind the counter. Katherine says that until she began working in the shop she didn’t realise how supportive they would be as she got to grips with the job, and she’s very grateful to them.
Paul Brassley
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March 2020
Village Shop Talk
The word volunteer has its origins in the Latin voluntas, meaning will, in the sense of people doing things of their own free will, and not because they have been coerced into or paid for doing them. The German word for a volunteer is a Freiwilliger, which reflects the free will idea exactly, whereas the French just seem to use their word volontaire in a military context, despite the old soldier’s advice to ‘never volunteer for anything’; the French word for somebody who does something without being paid is a bénévole, a word which seems to add the idea of good to will.
These etymological musings have been provoked by the recent departure for a new home in Scotland of Anne and Rob Parkinson. They had obviously never heard of the old soldier’s advice, or decided to ignore it. In the course of more than thirty years in the village they volunteered to help the school, the church, the village hall, the history group, the annual Simms Hill rally, and the village shop. They were indeed, as the French would not quite say, benevolent.
Their example makes you realise how many vital aspects of the life of the village depend upon volunteers. While the schoolteachers are paid, they are always looking for volunteers to help the children with their reading. Although we have a vicar, the church could not survive for long without the voluntary work of its congregation. And the village shop is no exception. The manager is paid, but volunteers serve behind the counter and do lots of other less obvious jobs, from stocking the shelves to disposing of the rubbish. Many of them give their time from simple goodwill, but often they also say that they really value the opportunity to meet neighbours that they would never otherwise have come to know. If you sleep for 8 hours a night there are 112 waking hours in the week, and volunteering for just one of them will be of enormous help to the committee (who are all volunteers) and the manager, Katherine Bainbridge. Do have a word with her when you next visit the shop.
Paul Brassley
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February 2020
Village Shop Talk
By the time you read this, at the end of January or the beginning of February, many of you will have seen a new face behind the counter at the village shop. It belongs to Katherine Bainbridge, who takes over from Helen Tate as the manager on February 1st. Helen has managed the shop since the autumn of 2016, but now wants to explore new opportunities. The shop and its customers owe her an enormous amount for her years of hard work and her genial presence, and we wish her good fortune in whatever she decides to do in future.
Katherine is no newcomer to the village. She’s lived in Ilsington, only a few yards from the shop, for about 14 years now, although she was born and raised in Newton Abbot. After leaving school she became a hairdresser in Teignmouth. Now she only exercises her coiffure skills on family members, apart from one old customer whose hair she has been taking care of for over twenty years.
It was in the hairdressing salon that Katherine realised how much she enjoyed working with the general public and being part of a team. Over the last few years she’s been the team member responsible for administration in her husband’s engineering business. If you’ve bought anything from outside the shop you will have seen one of his products: Richard made the shelving racks for the fruit and vegetables. She recognises that selling steel products is not quite the same as selling food and household products, but she points out that they both benefit from attention to costs and prices, so she has some skills that are useful for both businesses. She’s also spent part of her time working as a teaching assistant, initially at Ilsington village school and latterly at Widecombe. She says ‘I love working with children and I’m going to miss the school, but it’s time to move on’.
Many people will remember that until recently Katherine was also a member of the parish council; as a result she was involved in running the playing fields. She was on the village hall committee at the time that the shop was being built, and is still on the committee of the Jane Ford Trust. For several years now she has been running the quad-biking club in the south-west of England. It’s an activity for her whole family, taking them all over the country at the weekend. Her husband prepares the bike which her son rides expertly enough to be a British champion in the 250cc class. She looks after the organisation of the events while they’re in progress. ‘I can’t watch – too scared’ she admits; ‘I’m the kit washer’. Given the amount of mud involved, it’s a crucial role.
Katherine sees the shop as a vital part of the village. She wants to settle into the job and find out how things really work, but she already has some ideas about how she would like it to develop. In particular, she wants to find out more about what customers – and also people who are not currently customers – want from the shop. So do go and talk to her. She’s the new face behind the counter at present, and we extend a warm welcome to her in her new role.
Paul Brassley
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December 2019
Village Shop Talk
The traditional Christmas dinner is pretty heavy on meat. Turkey, goose, chicken, and beef have dominated the menu since Dickens was writing in the middle of the 19th century. An earlier recipe for ‘Christmas Pye’, published in 1719, prescribed a ‘most learned mixture of Neats-tongues, Chicken, Eggs, Sugar, Raisins, Lemon and Orange Peel, various Kinds of Spicery, etc’, which suggests that the ‘pye’ was half way to a pudding. But what if you don’t eat meat? That applies to more and more of us. Estimates of the actual numbers vary considerably, because there are various categories of non-meat eaters. Perhaps the strictest are the fruitarians, who will eat only fruits, nuts and seeds that can be obtained without harming a plant. Vegans – the term was only invented in 1944 – will eat anything that comes from plants, and their numbers have trebled in the last ten years. There are now more than half a million of them in Britain. If we include those who will eat eggs and dairy products but not meat or fish – the vegetarians – the number is now well over a million, but increasing numbers of people now identify as flexitarians: the bulk of their diet is vegetarian, but they occasionally eat meat or fish.
Given these numbers it is not surprising that a national bakery firm found its share price rising when it introduced a vegan sausage roll recently. Similarly, the village shop won’t be left behind. It already stocks vegetarian sausages, and will have vegan Christmas puddings on sale this month. For those who wish to roast nuts instead of birds the shop stocks quite a variety, as well as a cashew nut and cranberry nut roast mix. We are also responding to changing drinking patterns by selling both alcohol-free and gluten-free beers.
The shop will be closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. It will close at 1 pm on Christmas Eve and 29 December, and only open from 9 am to 5 pm on 27, 28 and 30 December. Then on 2 January everything will be back to normal. Enjoy the holiday, whatever you eat and drink to celebrate it.
Paul Brassley
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October 2019
Village Shop Talk
We don’t know when the first village shops appeared, but a survey of part of Suffolk in 1522, when Henry VIII was on the throne, revealed that farmers and farm labourers could be found in every parish, and tailors, shoemakers, butchers and carpenters in quite a few, but if you wanted to buy arrows from a fletcher, or gloves from a glover, or needed the services of a horseleech or a pardoner, you would have to travel to Sudbury, the largest local town. As incomes rose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more village traders set up in business, as dealers in everything from coal to tea. Local government records from Warwickshire suggest that after 1750 nearly one fifth of families in the larger villages made a living by retailing food of one kind or another, especially tea and sugar, tobacco, spices, and dried fruit. Another historian has demonstrated a growth in all sorts of village shops in Cheshire at the same time, with even drapers and ironmongers being found in some places.
This growth in rural retailing was brought to an end by about the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as the expansion of railway branch lines made travel to local towns easier for many people, although it was a slow process. In 1939 there were still nine shops in Ilsington parish, but widespread car ownership is probably the main factor leading to the disappearance of village shops over the last fifty years or so. The Plunkett Foundation, which was so helpful when we were setting up our own community shop, found that between 300 and 400 commercial village shops closed in each of the last few years. On the other hand, each year has seen the opening of 22 community shops like ours. There are now about 10,000 volunteers working in nearly 400 community shops across the country. They form part of a legacy of long-standing community cooperation which dates back to the Middle Ages. So we can congratulate ourselves on not only providing a vital service, but maintaining an ancient rural tradition.
Paul Brassley
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September 2019
Village Shop Talk
More than ten years ago, the idea of opening a shop for the village was formulated by a dedicated group who had watched, with sadness, the closure of the previous shop. They worked tirelessly for many months to turn their plans into a reality. So that all could be a part of this vision, it was decided that anyone could buy a share for £5 and own a small but important part of the fabric of the village. However, more money was needed, from charities and other sources. The really big breakthrough came in October 2011, with a successful application to the European Union’s Rural Development Programme for England. It provided a grant of £179,000, the bulk of the money needed to construct the new building, still commemorated by the plaque on the wall to your left as you enter the shop. Several of the other grants we received required matching funding from local people, and that’s when there was a big incentive to raise money by selling shares in the shop. Many people bought lots of £5 shares, but the Society still operates on the principle of OMOV – one member, one vote, no matter how many shares the member originally acquired.
Since the shop reopened 7 years ago we have seen many newcomers to the area who may have missed the initial jubilation at the renewed ability to shop locally and well. They (you) may also have not realised that it is still quite possible to become a shareholder and be an active voting member of the shop community.
One of the best parts of being a shareholder is the ability to decide which charity benefits from surplus funds that may accrue over the year at the shop. You might also be asked for your opinion and to vote on key proposals for the future of your shop.
Of course you will now want to know how you can become a shareholder?! It’s easy! Just come to the shop, pick up a form, apply and make your financial contribution. The price of democracy is cheap, but its value is enormous.
Paul Brassley
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August 2019
Village Shop Talk
In the late fifteenth century, before printing was common, books were expensive. Manuscript books were definitely luxury items, and even early printed books were pricey. In one case some second-hand books were valued at 70 pence each. That may not sound much until you realise that the same source put the price of ale at a penny a gallon. Contrast that with today, when the book, certainly the second-hand book, is often virtually free. If you take advantage of the book exchange in the village shop a book will only cost you the effort of bringing in another book that you’ve already read, and if you’ve forgotten to do that the cost is only 50 pence. So books, which may have taken the author several years of creativity, research and effort, are amazingly good value and among the cheapest items in the shop.
Since they have all been brought in by customers they might have something to tell us about the reading habits of local people. They are not a perfect guide, because people don’t exchange the books that they might want to read again, or refer to, or value for some other reason. But given those caveats, what do the shop bookshelves reveal? There is little non-fiction: a few cookery and history books, and a slim volume on puppy care and training, perhaps once bought for a dog now grown up. But most genres of fiction are represented: crime, thrillers, science fiction, historical romances and family sagas, fantasy, and modern literary fiction in the novels of Anne Tyler and Molly Keane. At one point somebody in the village clearly enjoyed the Cornwall-set stories of Gloria Cook, for there are several on the shelves. And can one detect the decision to have a good clear-out in the presence of well-used volumes of Terry Pratchett and several battered Star Trek books?
There may now be more books on the shelves of the village shop, available for virtually nothing, than there were in the entire parish in the fifteenth century. Perhaps that’s a measure of progress?
Paul Brassley
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July 2019
Village Shop Talk
A cynic, as Oscar Wilde famously said (in his play Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3), knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If we multiply the number of items sold in the shop by the price at which they are sold we arrive at the total sales figure. Does that measure the value of the shop to the village, as the cynic would presumably argue, or is there more to it? Does the shop provide anything else of value?
One of the clear conclusions from the survey carried out last summer was that many people use the shop because they feel it connects them to the local community. For many customers, the opportunity to meet other people in the village is an important part of their shopping experience. But how can we put a value on that? There also seems to be some evidence that having a local shop increases property values in the village, although by how much is not easy to say. The school, the pub and the church undoubtedly have the same effect. There is a simple logic behind this: if these services did not exist in the village, those who need them would incur travelling expenses and lose time in going elsewhere to obtain them. Therefore even people who never use the shop might benefit from its existence when they come to sell their houses.
We should not believe that these benefits will necessarily always be available. Like the school, the pub and the church, the shop relies on being used. But it is much more dependent than those other three village institutions on volunteers. Although it has a paid manager, she needs our support. Inevitably some of the people who devoted a lot of time to the shop when it began can no longer do so, for a variety of reasons. They need to be replaced, so if you can spare an hour or two every week to be at the heart of your local community, do think about volunteering in the shop. You’ll be adding value to the village, even if we can’t quite put a figure on how much.
Paul Brassley
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June 2019
Village Shop Talk
Are you missing out on a continental holiday this year? Fear not. The village shop brings you food from every continent except Antarctica, which may be a problem for those with a penchant for coddled penguin eggs but shouldn’t concern most of us.
A rapid survey of the shop recently revealed produce from at least 26 countries. If you count Cornwall and Scotland as separate nations, as some would prefer, make that 28. But it’s almost certainly more than that, because the shop stocks many products, particularly herbs and spices, for which the label simply states that they were packed in the UK without revealing their country of origin. Most European countries, ours included, were importing spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon from the east since at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier. Indeed the French word for grocer – épicier – literally means ‘spicer’. It’s also unlikely that the Cornish tea and coffee was actually grown just west of the Tamar; in fact the labels suggest that the coffee came from Costa Rica or Colombia.
In contrast, the information on canned fish is much more specific, perhaps as a result of concerns about over-fishing. Thus we can tell that our tuna was caught in the Indian Ocean and packed on the island of Mauritius, whereas the sardines were caught in the east central Atlantic and met their tomato sauce in Morocco, and the mackerel swam into nets in the north-east Atlantic and were canned in Denmark. We rely on at least ten different countries for our fruit and vegetables. Quite a few come from Spain, but during the winter the ‘French’ beans come from Kenya and recently at least one lot of garlic was imported from China. It takes ten different countries to keep us supplied with wine, but not so many to produce our beer. The Peroni comes from Rome, the Budweiser from the Czech Republic, and Becks is brewed in Bremen, but that old Spanish favourite, San Miguel, is brewed, as you might not expect, in Northampton.
Paul Brassley
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May 2019
Village Shop Talk
‘What if …..’ are two of the most interesting words in the English language. For example, what if we no longer had the use of a car? For some people that’s how it is, and for most people that’s how it was eighty years ago in 1939, so it’s not surprising to find that there were then more shops in the parish of Ilsington. Kelly’s Directory for that year lists Martha Giles with a grocery at Glebe Cottage and Alice Heathman keeping a shop and Post Office. There were three tobacconists: Alice Commins, Emily Elson in Liverton, and Thirza Stone, who kept the Liverton Post Office too. Also in Liverton were the newsagent Alfred Dymond and Lily Mary Ellen Rogers, shopkeeper. There was a third Post Office and shop in Haytor kept by Emily Morrish, and William Pascoe, grocer, had the Haytor Stores. But now, if we were suddenly deprived of our cars (and our computers), for how long could we live on what we could buy in the village shop?
As far as food is concerned, probably quite a long time. A balanced diet needs carbohydrates, fats and proteins, supported by micronutrients in the form of vitamins and minerals, and including sufficient dietary fibre. In the shop, of course, all these things come packaged as bread, potatoes, meat, fish, butter and cheese, fruit and vegetables, and so on, and there’s a sufficient range to cover all the main food groups. Something to drink? There’s a range of teas and coffees, soft drinks, wines, beers, and spirits. You could keep the kitchen and the rest of the house perfectly habitable with the range of cleaning products on offer, and for entertainment and information there are books, magazines, newspapers and DVDs, and cards to send to your friends. If the prospect of a car-free life makes you feel ill, there are even some basic painkillers available. And if you would rather pay cash than use a card, you can get that by cash-back or on Monday and Friday mornings when the post office visits. Cigarettes are available for those who smoke, but today there are probably not enough smokers in the parish to keep three tobacconists in business.
Paul Brassley
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April 2019
Village Shop Talk
‘One volunteer is worth two pressed men’ goes the saying, but one wonders if everyone knows who or what ‘pressed men’ were. Like many other common expressions (cut and run, slush fund) it began as a naval term. The demands of the expanding eighteenth-century navy for crews led to the development of an Impress Service with the power to force both merchant seamen and ‘landmen’ to serve in the Royal Navy. By Nelson’s time at the beginning of the nineteenth century half a ship’s crew might be pressed men, the rest being volunteers. The system died out in the 1830s and nobody then worried much about impressment or conscription for military service until after the Boer war of 1899 to 1902. Even in the First World War conscription was not introduced until 1916. Before that, the pointing finger and enormously moustached face of Lord Kitchener staring out of posters had produced enough volunteers. Conscription for all three services was reintroduced on 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, and continued after the war. The last conscript only left the army in May 1963, so many men in the parish who are over 80 this year will have memories of National Service.
Fortunately the village shop has no power to conscript its staff. In addition to the manager and her assistant, who are paid, there are nearly fifty active volunteers who play a vital role in keeping it going. Between them they cover about eighty opening hours each week. And it’s not only the friendly faces behind the counter who are needed. Some volunteers work on making sure that the stock is up to date, others help by collecting various products from our suppliers, and some help in the office. But of course they have other things to do, and go on holiday from time to time, so there is always a need for more volunteers. If you would like to be involved just mention it the next time you happen to be in the shop. As Lord Kitchener would have said, ‘Your Village Shop Needs You’.
Paul Brassley
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March 2019
Village Shop Talk
Last summer was the best that I can remember for blackberries. I picked a lot, and those I didn’t eat I put into a plastic box that previously held ice cream. I bought wonderful strawberries, which came in their own plastic tubs. All of which made me think about the containers in which we collected and bought fruit before plastics were widely available.
Forty or fifty years ago strawberries and other soft fruit were commonly sold in small baskets made of thin strips of wood. They were called punnets, or chip baskets. H.L.Edlin, in his detailed and fascinating account of Woodland Crafts in Britain, first published in 1949, tells us that they were made from thin strips of willow that were cut from a log by machine before being bent or woven into shape and secured by a metal staple. Millions were made every year, and Wisbech, near the strawberry fields around the Wash, was then the centre of the industry. Alder wood was sometimes used for the rims of the baskets, and in Scotland pine wood was used for the raspberry crop, but for lightness, strength and cleanliness, according to Edlin, there was nothing to beat ‘the valuable intrinsic qualities of our native willow’.
The village shop has a policy of trying to minimise the use of plastic, so it uses paper bags for fruit and vegetables. Customers are encouraged to bring their own shopping bags (we’ve also noticed an increase in the use of wicker baskets), or you can take your shopping home in a biodegradable 5p bag which you can then use to line your compost bin. It’s an interesting exercise to walk around the shelves and think about how different products might be packaged if we tried to do away with plastic altogether. Presumably it would not be difficult to put soft drinks into glass bottles. Would waxed paper do for meat, or waxed card for ice cream and yoghurt? We might have a problem with vacuum-packed and frozen meat or fish without plastic film. But I could certainly re-use a punnet to pick blackberries.
Paul Brassley
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February 2019
Village Shop Talk
On a Saturday in the middle of September the broadband went down causing the card machine in the village shop to fail. No problem for those paying with cash, but not everybody now carries cash with them. Nationally, we have now reached the stage where roughly half of in-store payments are made using contactless payment cards, so that lack of notes and coins was hardly surprising. Fortunately Ilsington customers are a trustworthy lot, so their debts were noted by the endearingly old-fashioned method of writing them down in a book, and they returned to pay, either by cash or by card when the wifi was repaired early the following week.
Shop takings increased significantly in the few days last winter when we were cut off by the snow. At the opposite extreme, there was a short period in those wonderful long hot days last summer when the air conditioning in the shop failed. Again, we became more conscious of the importance of things we normally take for granted. The electricity supply did not fail, but we might remember that it can do so, and, indeed, that Ilsington has not always had a mains electricity supply, although it has been available, in the centre of the village at least, since shortly before the Second World War. Houses and farms further away from the centre had to wait until later, and in any case not everybody could immediately afford the cost of installing electricity. Nevertheless they still managed to find a way of lighting and heating their houses, cooking and preserving their food, powering their tools, milking their cows, communicating with each other, entertaining themselves, and paying for their shopping. Such things perhaps took longer in the absence of power at the flick of a switch, but they could be done.
The shop was a lifeline for some people in last winter’s snow, and we managed to get around the card machine problem back in September. How convenient it is now to be able to nip to the shop for the things we need, and how lucky we are to have it. It’s the retail equivalent of flicking the light switch.
Paul Brassley
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December 2018
Village Shop Talk
‘Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat’ goes the old nursery rhyme, but fat and perhaps apprehensive geese almost certainly pre-date Christianity. Some scholars argue for the origins of Christmas in the Roman feast of Saturnalia, which marked the end of the autumn sowing season in Italy. Others contend that it had more to do with ‘sol invicta’, the feast of the unconquered sun, gradually returning again after the shortest day. The northern European festival of Yule, with its ceremonial log providing light while the sun stood still, relates to the same idea, and it was also the time at which Druids cut mistletoe as the symbol of life.
All these celebrations were marked with feasting and gift-giving, as the nursery rhyme suggests. A turkey as the centre of the Christmas dinner is a relatively recent tradition in England, dating only from the nineteenth century. Before that came the goose, and the advantages of goose-fat for roasting potatoes has seen geese increase in popularity in recent years. A seasonal flurry of baking is also common throughout European countries. Our mince pies, Christmas cakes and plum puddings are matched by German Stollen, Italian pannetone and Scandinavian ginger biscuits.
Ilsington village shop will be rising to the challenge of ensuring that you have everything you need to continue this age-old tradition. You will be able to order turkeys [and geese and chickens?] in advance, and also reserve all the vegetables you need to go with them. There will be some special treats from our regular suppliers – make sure you look at the shelves on the left as you enter the door – and a wide range of attractive Christmas cards. Also look out for the announcement of a mince pie and mulled wine evening to get you in the mood. The shop will close at 5 pm on Christmas Eve, and will be open between 9 am and 5 pm from Thursday 27th to Monday 31st, except for the Sunday half day. Enjoy your traditional feasting and gift-giving, whatever you call it!
Paul Brassley
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November 2018
Village Shop Talk
Back in July most people living in Ilsington and Haytor Vale received a questionnaire about their use of the village shop, and we are very grateful to those of you who completed it and returned it to the shop. Most of the returned forms were from people who use the shop regularly, and it would have been good to hear more from those who do a lot of their grocery shopping online or elsewhere. Nevertheless, the survey produced some interesting results, and the shop committee members have now had time to consider and respond to them.
Only a few of the people answering the questionnaire used the shop less than once a week. Most used it at least once, and some three times a week or more, and most people were using it as much as or more than they did in the past, which suggests that the core group of customers is happy with the service that the shop provides. Many pointed out that it’s about more than retail therapy. For them, supporting the community and meeting people are also important reasons for using the shop. However, there were some people who were less satisfied. One of the more frequent complaints concerned the quality and freshness of the fruit and vegetables, and as a result the shop has recently changed its greengrocery supplier to one who promises better quality at competitive prices. It also stocks a range of products from the Fish Deli in Ashburton, Cox and Laflin (the butchers at Ullacombe), Sladesdown Farm at Ashburton and Dartington Dairy. And you may have noticed that it’s recently been redecorated and that the café area has been refurbished and provided with new furniture.
The important point to remember is that we are always happy to receive comments on quality and requests for the things that you, the customers, want. Please ask to have them written in the day book with your name and contact details. We want a shop that really does reflect the diverse needs and tastes of our village.
Paul Brassley
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October 2018
Village Shop Talk
In 1958 about 25 million barrels of beer were drunk in the United Kingdom, together with about 15 million gallons of wine. These figures come from that treasure-trove for the numerically fascinated, the Annual Abstract of Statistics. By the time the figures have been converted into comparable units, it appears that wine accounted for no more than 2 per cent of the volume of booze consumed.
Another way of examining our drinking is by what we spend on it. In 1965 beer accounted for 59p of every pound spent on alcoholic drink. The latest figures are from the 2017 Household Expenditure Survey, and show that wine and sparkling wine took 51p of the drinker’s pound, whereas beer only accounted for 22p.
These figures are not quite comparable with the 1965 data because they refer only to alcoholic drinks consumed at home. But at least they support what the baby boom generation will remember: when they were young, wine was nothing like as popular as it is now, and some of it – remember Blue Nun and Hirondelle Red? – would not today be rated very highly. Women may be especially responsible for the change. A study in 2017 by the Office for National Statistics on adult drinking habits revealed that 60 per cent of women who had drunk alcohol in the previous week drank wine or sparkling wine, compared with 33 per cent of men.
We can see the local effects of these national changes in the village shop, where wines and beers are the biggest sellers both numerically and in value. As well as a wide range of beers – the latest is a lager called Devon Maid – there are wines from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Italy and Chile. All of those countries were producing wines sixty years ago, but you would not have found them in a village shop. The shop offers the opportunity to taste a different wine every two weeks, so next time you try one think about how much change a single lifetime can see.
Paul Brassley
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September 2018
Village Shop Talk
2018 is a good year for anniversaries. It’s one hundred years since the end of the First World War and the formation of the Royal Air Force, and, more locally, a thousand years since the first Benedictine Buckfast Abbey was founded. Even more locally, it’s ten years since the events that resulted in the building of Ilsington Village Shop.
Hilary and Stuart Morrish had taken over a shop as part of Glebe Cottage in the early 1980s, but in 2006 they sold it to Andrea and David Arnold. In 2008, due to family commitments, the Arnolds were unable to continue running the shop. On September 30th they held an open meeting to tell the local community that they wanted to end their involvement with it at the end of the year, although they were happy for it to be run as a community venture. That was the beginning.
This is not the place – and there isn’t the space – to write a history of the shop and to tell the story of how the money was raised to build it as an addition to the village hall. But at the shop’s Annual General Meeting in June this year, Alan Hobbs, who has been the chair of the shop committee since it was first formed, and Paul Hughes, who has similarly been the treasurer, announced their retirement. They have done an enormous amount of work, and helped to guide the shop from its infancy to its present established status. The whole village surely owes them an enormous debt of gratitude. Sue Norris, who has been the secretary of the committee during those ten years, is carrying on, and Emma Schramm, who was the first shop manager, has now joined the committee, so we continue to have an experienced team in charge. If you don’t already use the shop, you might pop in soon and see what’s happening ten years on, or even think about becoming one of the team of volunteers that keep it going.
Paul Brassley