This comes from Jennifer Venville Nicol (Venville being her maiden name), now living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who lived in Hidson Road very close to Stockland Green, Erdington in the years following World War II.

On Marsh Hill, on the same side as the petrol station was the Outdoor, the off-licence. Amazingly enough children could go and take a cider bottle or a jug and purchase beer and cider from the barrels that were inside the shop to take home to their parents.

I believe they sold mostly beer, stout, ale and some spirits. There was always a sign over the door of such establishments declaring who owned the licence to sell these goods.

There was an overpowering smell of beer in the store. The proprietors lived on the premises so the place smelled of cooking as well. The proprietor, a woman, often served you with hair curlers in her hair and felt slippers on her feet.

Eventually these kinds of Outdoors were sold to a separate company, Victoria Wines, which I think is still operative.

Further along Marsh Hill on the same side, in a row of Victorian houses, was Patterson's Newsagents. This was a very modern looking shopfront for those times. The shop provided some of the locals with a newspaper delivery service and, of course, that's were the paperboys hung out.

Later on there were papergirls also. This shop sold birthday cards, stationery items, some sweets and chocolates and also some toys. You could belong to the Christmas club.

That meant several weeks before Christmas you would select presents that you would like to purchase and pay for them each week. It was a very friendly shop and quite warm and modern inside. The paper delivery area was quite large and a lot of people popped in to 'pay the papers'.

Carrying on a little further until now we are at the corner of Slade Road and Marsh Hill, we come to the bakers shop of George Baines Ltd. This was a chain bakery in Birmingham and their bread was called 'Sun Blest'.

This was the first time I ever saw sliced bread. During the war years a queue would form every day outside the shop and we would wait and wait for the bread to be delivered.

As I grew older I was often sent to Baines for bread and cakes....... some of the small cakes were....Vanilla Slices, Eccles Cakes, Battenburg Cakes, Cream Buns, Chocolate Eclairs, Pineapple Creams, Cream Horns, Jam Tarts, Maids of Honour, etc. It always smelled divine in here.

Off we go around the corner to Mr. Brown's the shoe repairer. This was also a 'front room' type of shop and it was an old-fashioned cobblers with metal show lasts on the counter and lots of leather hanging up behind the counter.

He also used to dye shoes and the shop often had a smell of shoe dye in it. The Victorian houses here were eventually pulled down and the lovely furniture store A.H. Field appeared. This was probably late l940's early l950's.

It was a very nice store and had another branch in Erdington High Street.

They had some very interesting promotions at times and would blank out all the windows and keep just open a peek in areas so that you could peer in at the different room set-ups.

This was an exciting time since the new furniture was very modern and quite luxurious compared to the utility furniture available during the war. One time they had a bedroom scene with a dummy woman in bed and you could see her breathing.

The bedclothes were very snazzy, satin I believe. Very innovative.....it was the talk of the area for weeks. Good advertising tactic......everyone wanted to see this 'woman' in bed!!!!! It was a very glamorous set up as I remember.

Jennifer Nicol, British Columbia, Canada, 2001