Neil the Shop

Mairi Hedderwick.
- from correspondence
with Neil MacDonald.
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Neil sadly died before the publication of this year's issue of the Coll Magazine. Over the past year, prior to his death in Cowdenbeath in Fife on April 3rd. 1991, he sent me many letters full of Coll memories, some of which are reprinted here. Neil was an avid reader of the Magazine and it is with great regret thsat he never lived to see these memories in print. M.H.
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In the late '20s, when Neil MacDonald was a young lad helping his father in the wee shop up the lane behind Katina MacDonald's on Shore Street, most employees in the island were paid their wages every 6 months. They got credit on groceries which they would then pay for at 'term' - 28th. May and 28th. November. A long time for a shopkeeper to wait for payment.

Things have speeded up, hopefully, for shopkeepers today but Neil's memories of 30 years behind the counter on Coll had recurring themes of depressing similarity. High transport charges and long distance telephone ordering costs. Receipt of damaged goods, pilfering in transit and little, if any, compensation for such losses. And as the years have gone by, the ultimate insult to injury - the inevitable, yet understandable, proportion of goods sent direct to households from the mainland supermarkets. Holiday people no less guilty than islanders. Some would say more guilty as the place that they so love to come to on holiday is precariously dependent on a healthy economy for its survival.

Neil The Shop, as he is still affectionately called, remembered less visitors and more self-sufficiency in the early days of his career. Nearly every family had their own hens and a milk cow. Surplus butter and eggs were exchanged for groceries. Eggs sold for 6d (21/2p) per dozen. By the early '30s 'the wee shop' had moved to an extension built onto the family home at Green Cottage; (Now the site of the new bungalow on the loch side of Shore St.)

Expansion brought new ideas. The MacDonalds introduced the first ice cream to the island. The suppliers were Hood's of Glasgow. The ice cream was dispatched packed in dry ice and had to be sold on the day of arrival. The excitement of boat day in those days must have had an extra frisson. Eventually Wall's provided an Electrolux Calor Gas operated deep freeze.

There were a few other 'wee shoppies' on the island - at Sorasdal, Struan and Totronald. But these only stocked odds and ends such as sweets, tea and tobacco. The big competitor was 'the Big Shop' (now Coll Trading) just along the street. This was owned by the Estate and leased by the late Robert Sturgeon who also ran the Post Office from there. Mr Sturgeon gave up the shop in 1938 and took the Post Office to the original Tigh na Mara on the site of the present one. The Big Shop was advertised to let. It lay empty for 4 years.

Neil had gone to the War but was discharged from the Army due to ill health in 1942. On his return to Coll the Estate Factor offered him the tenancy, Neil's father having died. After much deliberation, Neil took it over on a 3 year lease. The lease was never renewed.

The new and now only shop on the island was called MacDonald's Stores. It was much bigger than the previous one and being the war years, supplies were short. Shelves were difficult to fill. Goods were rationed and couponed, an unenviable task for any shopkeeper. In 1945 Sproat's Shop started trading as well. (See Coll Magazine; Issue 6; 1988). Quantities allocated to each person once a week were as follows: 1/2lb. Sugar, 4ozs. butter, 4ozs. bacon, 2ozs. cheese, 2ozs. tea and 4ozs. sweets, when available. Coffee was unattainable and most other goods only available on a points system. Shoes and drapery needed Government issued coupons.

In the '30s and '40s there were hardly any prepacked foods. Most goods came in bulk. Bread came unwrapped in large wicker hampers which had to be returned to Glasgow. The bread was mostly 'square unwrapped' i.e. two loaves still stuck together just as they had come out of the baker's tin. If someone asked for a 'half loaf' the two loaves were separated which is the origin of the somewhat confusing description.

Glasgow bread was all the style. Like 'cooking with gas' such modernity indicated affluence. The day that the boat passed due to storms meant that the housewives reluctantly had to get out the old griddle and stoke up the fire and get on with the baking. For this reason, if no other, many a man on the island was known to be pleased when the boat did not call....

Flour for baking came in cwt. sacks initially. Latterly in 1/2cwts. When the sacks were emptied Neil's mother would wash and bleach out the trade mark, usually 'King's Own Plain Flour'. She then made pillow slips and aprons out of the good strong cotton. Rice, lentils, oatmeal, Indian meal (still used is parts of W. Ireland for scone making), dried fruits, butter, margarine all had to be weighed out and packaged to individual customer requirements.

As Neil says, a shopkeeper had to be a master grocer in those days. Not much time for listening to Radio 2 and looking out the window with bacon to be sliced, paper pokes to be make by hand for each order of sweets, cutting and weighing tobacco that came in large coils. Biscuits were loose in large tins, (2/deposit), Jam jars and lemonade bottles had to be returned too.

Bananas came on the whole stem packed in a wooden crate. Apples were in a large barrel. Cardboard was little used for packaging. There was a limited range of confectionery. Chocolate and toffee bars were unwrapped. Boiled sweets - very popular - came in 71b cans.

Tinkers often visited the island and would come into the shop looking for empty sweet and biscuit tins. They made them into milk cans and fillers for paraffin lamps, then hawked them round the doors.

Some of Neil's customers were not at all welcome. Fruit and Veg. were displayed in boxes on the floor of the front shop. The village sheep - a notorious breed - would be for ever walking in and sampling the wares. To Neil's amusement, after his fury and the sheep had fled, he noticed that they always went for the oranges which they seemed to love.

As well as foodstuffs, Neil The Shop stocked ironmongery, glass-ware, knitting wool and paraffin which was sold by the gallon and 'messy to handle'. Methylated spirit for priming stoves and Tilley lamps had to be scrupulously accounted for during the War and a register kept with the name and signature of customers. The policeman came over from Tiree every 3 months to inspect the register.

Daily and weekly papers arrived on Mons., Weds. and Fridays, winter and summer. Neil believed that Coll got a better service in his day. Boat day brought that day's paper and the Sunday papers arrived on Monday. Neil could not understand on a recent trip to Coll, why it was possible for him to get that day's paper in Oban at 5am before the boat sailed at 6am and yet it be impossible for shop copies to get to Coll the same day.

The first grocery delivery van arrived for MacDonald's Stores in the early '5Os. "Second hand, of course. It didn't last very long." Nor its replacement. Even a brand new Austin from Wilson's in Oban seemed to have a limited life. But over the years the island postmen would come to the rescue and, "with no grudge", deliver the newspapers, urgent messages and medicines from the Dr. Even in the days of bicycle delivery before the vans. Until one black day in the '60s when 'someone' reported to the Head Postmaster in Oban that the postman was delivering more that mails.

It can be a no-win situation, sometimes, running an island shop, thought Neil. He wryly remembered, during the War when luxuries were like gold, managing to obtain some little items suitable for Christmas presents. He delightedly arranged them in the shop windows only to overhear one local say to another as they looked at the display "It would be more suitable of him to get goods in for people to eat".

Whatever the ups and downs over the years, 73 year old Neil proudly noted that he was the tenant with the longest lease out of all seven leasees/proprietors to date. The first tenant was a Donald McLennan from N. Uist in the early '20s. (Neil believed he is still alive, now over 90 and living back in N. Uist). The McKays took over from Donald. Then Mr. Sturgeon. Neil The Shop from 1942-1974. Cathie and Ian McLean then leased the premises for several years before mrs. Stewart who was proprietor as well. The present owner is Janet Driver of Coll Trading.

Shopkeepers on Coll today and yesterday must have many a tale, printable and un-printable, about the vagaries of their be-leaguered profession and the awkwardness of their customers. At least with prepacked and weighed items some confrontations are no longer possible. Neil remembered the woman who insisted that he always gave her short weight. She had a cheap set of household scales that were not at all accurate but still she maintained that everything loose from the Shop was 2ozs. short despite the fact that Neil had 3 sets of Avery scales that were inspected twice yearly by the Weights and Measures inspectors who came unannounced.

My favourite story I'll let Neil tell in his own words.

"I used to store empty crates of empty lemonade bottles outside the back shop. Crates and bottles had a deposit on them in those days, Annie Calum Post was helping me in the Shop at the time. There was a family - no names! - on holiday on the island staying in Arinagour. One day, their wee boy came into the Shop about six times with four empty lemonade bottles for which I paid him the deposit. I said to Annie, "That is strange. I wonder where he is getting all the empties?".

I was in the back shop later on, however, and noticed him stealing the bottles from the crates. I got on to him. He told me 'For goodness sake, don't tell my father or he will murder me.'

I did not tell his father."