Werther’s Originals, and a changed high street
Sadia Nowshin remembers the grocery stores of her childhood, and the people who once made it what it was
The first house I lived in was a 15 minute walk from my grandparents. My brother and I spent every school holiday with them, which often meant traipsing reluctantly behind them to the greengrocers on Coventry’s Stoney Stanton Road, a high street that segmented the journey between houses almost exactly halfway.
Crates of fruit and vegetables jutted out into the pavement, rolls of satin-like lime green plastic bags fluttered above our heads, hand-drawn price tags on neon orange cards begged to be haggled with. Every shop smelled distinct; a waft of cumin, fresh fabric just unpacked from its plastic wrap, a breeze carrying the scent that my grandad dabbed on his wrists every morning. I’d hold my breath and avert my eyes away from the carcasses hanging up in the window of the butchers, a habit I still keep. A sweet shop opened round the corner, and I’d exhale in time to make my appeal; three little ziplock bags for £1, and 20 minutes spent choosing.
Just off the high street was a youth centre that had once kept my unruly uncles busy in their teens, and then a generation later gave my peers somewhere to spend after-schools and weekends. One Saturday, I was there without any money for a snack and the cook slipped me a warm croissant laden with jam, crisp at the edges where it had caught in the toaster.
Every Saturday morning, there’d be a knock at our front door and I’d struggle with the deadlock until it gave way, revealing my grandad on the other side carrying two blue plastic bags of shopping collected on his walk across that high street. Loose potatoes, netted onions with flakes of crispy skin peeling off, mangoes that had been prodded and squeezed for inspection, bags of fragrant spices, bundles of coriander spilling out of the top. He’d rest the load on the floor beside the sofa and, before sitting, reach into his coat pocket. My brother and I would stand attentively and receive our bounty gratefully: a chocolate Lion bar and a Werther’s Original hard caramel each.
The street feels different these days. It’s still buzzing with shoppers haggling at the greengrocers, but the life I lived there is gone. The youth centre shut years ago after a failed campaign to save it from council cuts; for months afterwards there was still a cardboard sign outside, weathered and peeling at the corners, asking to ‘save our play centre’. The kindly man who ran the sweet shop has since passed, leaving his wife to keep it going when she has the energy to set it all out and open the doors. We all moved to the other side of the city, and my grandad stopped his Saturday visits because it takes half an hour to get between houses. In the couple of years before he passed, he could no longer carry his shopping home without a lift.
On a recent trip back, I was driven down Stoney Stanton Road and we pulled up outside the butchers. I sat in the backseat of the car while my mother ordered her chicken, and watched the street. A woman loaded tied-off bags under an empty pram, a few men shouted greetings to each other across the road, ignoring the beeping of cars as they darted through traffic. Then two children — a girl and a boy — came out of the grocery store clutching half a Twix each, followed shortly by their grandma telling them not to stray too far ahead.
Almost a familiar scene. And so I let myself imagine for a moment that I saw my grandad on the street opposite, eyes fixed ahead, moving through the crowd with three blue plastic bags clutched in hand and two Lion bars in his pocket, on his way to knock at our door.
Sadia Nowshin is the Junior Editor at Boundless Magazine