COLUMN
Business
Buzz
with Harry Pearson
How local businesses came
to my parents’ rescue
Award-winning columnist Harry Pearson
reflects on his parents’ lockdown experience
– and how business came to the rescue.
My mother and father live out in Teesdale. They
are both 86 years old. As part of the lockdown
shielding, they were not allowed to leave the
house. I asked my dad if I could post him something –
books, DVDs or CDs perhaps?
His answer? “Be a good lad and send us The
Revenant, that Napoleonic navy film with Russell
Crowe, and 400 Silk Cut cigarettes.”
I did as I was instructed. Dad survived World War
Two, active service in the Green Howards, the threat
of nuclear annihilation and the managerial reign of
Tony Pulis, so I figured what harm could tobacco do
him now?
Arranging food deliveries proved trickier. My
parents don’t own a computer or a smartphone. No
problem, I told them, I could sort it all out for them
and get a delivery from a big local supermarket. I
registered for them. I went to book a slot. Every single
supermarket delivery slot was taken for the next
month.
“We’ve enough here to get us through a week,”
my mother said when I broke the news. “Ten days, if I
hide the cake tin from your dad. It’s a pity there isn’t a
mobile shop anymore.”
My mother told me that when her and dad lived in
Redcar the mobile shop used to come round three
times a week. “The man who ran it was a short,
funny little fella. Twenty-five years later I turned on
the telly and there he was doing magic tricks on The
Wheeltappers and Shunters Club. It was Paul bloomin’
Daniels!”
This is true. Long before he found some “Not a lot”
of fame as a TV magician, Slaggy Islander Daniels ran
a mobile grocers with his parents. It was an old Isle of
Wight tour bus, with a potato store in the boot and
freezer filled with peas and ice cream.
“In Great Ayton back in the sixties there was a
man who delivered fresh fish from Whitby on a horse
and cart,” my mother continued. There was indeed. I
remember him well. His face was so red from cold and
wind it looked like you could boil a kettle on it and he
Business support -
Harry Pearson’s parents.
wore a massive tarpaulin coat and a sou’wester hat.
Once he got in trouble with the police for driving
his cart ‘under the influence’, though as people said,
“Sat on that thing in the middle of winter you’d need
summat to warm you up.”
Back then, when most people still didn’t own a car,
lots of travelling shops came through estates and
villages. Up until the early-seventies there was even
a travelling film-man who’d arrive every few months,
set up his silver screen in the village hall and give
inhabitants the opportunity to see a double-bill of
Elvis Presley movies a decade or so after the rest of
the planet.
“We could do with a fish cart or Paul Daniels now,”
my mother opined.
As it happens, they didn’t need either. We found a
farm shop, a butcher and greengrocer who were all
happy to deliver to my parents and take the order
over the phone. The butcher even offered to pick
up anything else they needed. The next order was a
sirloin of beef, two lamb chops and, yes, you guessed
it, 60 Silk Cut.
“It’s been really fantastic,” my father reflected.
“These local businesses have been so kind and
helpful. Your mother and I both said that when all this
is over we’re going to keep supporting them the way
they’ve supported us.”
I know they will, too. Hopefully, lots of people will do
the same and something good will have come out of
these past four months.
The voice of business in the Tees region | 81