For the start I used to be on the tills, fill up in between you know from when you'd got a spare minute and then I took over as the assistant manager and I worked under Mr Dennis Ekins. Nice fellow, yes, he'd been in the Co-op years and he really showed me all the tricks there was to do. At that particular branch I was there about six years and then I moved to Hove road to take over as manager. Mr. Ekins retired and they moved me to Hove Road to take over which I done for three and a half years and then I went to Rose Avenue, which is a very big shop, but I was there about four years. I was manager there, yes, manager there. Then I come back to Wellingborough Road to be a manager and I were there about two years, then I retired. Then the Co-op went the next year.

After I was assistant manager then I done the tills and all that work and well of course we sent a time sheet in, we didn't do the wages they were done at the main office down the High Street. No, I think in all the years I worked there I enjoyed myself. I had to take a lot of YTS (Youth Training Scheme) children. Yes, one of my girls she won the student of the year.

Most people stayed with the Co-op for their working lives they did. You didn't get much chopping and changing there were only a number of jobs you could go to like in the shoe trade or on retail side. Yes, it makes you wonder now where do people go. The place is bigger than whatever it was.

The shop opened from 8.30 to one o'clock, then two o'clock until six. We shut for that hour at lunch time. We had to work half a day on Saturday. The bakery was delivered for a short time, yes, then we had it delivered to the shop. Then the bakery finished in Wellingborough.

Well, once or twice they had socials dos but they didn't entertain much, do much entertainment, no. But the Co-op, when I finished that was approximately a hundred years that shop had been open. That's a long time and of course most of them have gone now. Yes, they have all gone in Rushden. There's one in Irchester, one in Higham Ferrers and nothing in Irthlingborough. When I first went there to work there were twenty one shops on the A6 as they called it. They must have employed an awful lot of people. Oh, yes, on top of that there were draperies, there was the furniture, the butchers, fish and chip shop, the coal yard.

But, no it was pleasant because you met people. You know, you didn't stand chatting all the while but as you were walking by you conversed with the different, you get to know your regulars you know and that, yes. I don't think it's so friendly now because you've got these big supermarkets and no, no. No, they're not so friendly as what the, what we were when we were at the Co-op. You know the people who worked there.

There was Renee that used to go about on the baker's van, you know with the horse and cart with Ray and she worked with us in the grocery after the bread stopped. Yes, quite a nice lady, little lady but when she took her dog for a walk it were bigger than her. She'd got a big 'Dulux' dog. Yes, I enjoyed my work, I really did.

I've still got friends from that time. I was talking to one, one of the girls on Saturday you know. We meet up, you know, now and again and all have a chat. Course I've lost one or two who I worked with you know as things do happen. My brother he was the one that started the hardware. He worked for the Co-op for years when come out the forces. He started it off in the High Street it was only a little one. Only a little tiny one, just near the other side of what used to be Phillips'. A little shop and he brought in the old night fires and everything, introduced them into the town and then when they started doing paint and paper and everything they moved up into the big shop and he was there right up to retiring near enough, yes.

He's been dead twenty years. No, I'm afraid he weren't that old when he died, he never retired. He had emphysema, then cancer he had. Never smoked in his life. There was four of us, none of us ever smoked. I wonder how he got emphysema. Whether it were anything to do with malaria brought it on 'cos when he were in the Air Force abroad, yes. He was out in Cairo and that sort of thing. That's it, I think that's what caused it all, yes.

I was either in the catering trade or grocery shops, that's what I've done from leaving school. I originally came from Higham Ferrers. I didn't come far. My father come from Higham Ferrers and my mother come from Stanwick.