36 | Tees Business
The Business Buzz
With award-winning
writer Harry Pearson
A bread-winner who ruled by fear
The Tees Businesswomen
Awards inspire columnist
Harry Pearson to
reminisce about the first
businesswoman to make an
impression on his young life…
Inspiring - Tees Businesswoman of the
Year Claire Preston is a far cry from Miss
Metcalfe of Harry Pearson’s youth.
I
think the Tees Businesswomen Awards is a
splendid idea that is surely long overdue.
When I was growing up, back in the
1960s, many Teesside businesses were run
by women - often older women and quite
frequently pretty scary ones, at that. Indeed,
had the Tees Businesswoman of the Year
Award been running back then, I have little
doubt that it would have been won, year
in and year out, by Miss Metcalfe, the lady
behind the counter in our local bakery in
Great Ayton.
I’m not sure if Miss Metcalfe was actually
good at business, I should add, but one thing
was for sure she was not a woman to be
denied.
The morning after my parents moved into
the village, they were awoken at dawn by
a firm rapping on the front door. When my
mother opened it, she was confronted by
a statuesque, middle-aged woman in full
Fanny Craddock pan-stick make-up, who said
sharply: “I am Miss Metcalfe. You will buy
your bread and confectionaries from me.” It
was not a request, it was an order.
Miss Metcalfe was like a mafia don in a
floury pinny. Had she decided she was Tees
Businesswoman of the Year, no judge alive
would have dared tell her otherwise. Frankly,
she was so fearsome she made Lord Sugar
at his most irritable look like Mylene Klass
perusing a photo gallery of kittens wearing
bonnets.
Some businesses build brand loyalty
through excellence. She did it through terror.
Miss Metcalfe’s shop was next to a
greengrocer’s, whose proprietor was
suspected of placing his finger on the scales
when weighing out your sprouts.
Miss Metcalfe had no need for such
cunning. She made the hardest, heaviest and
densest bread in the universe. If you’d placed
it on an “I speak your weight” machine,
the device would have cried “Ouch!”. My
grandfather had a hernia lifting one of her
granary rolls.
Miss Metcalfe was aided by her younger
brother, a short toad-like man whose hair
was curled up on his head like a stuffed
ferret. He walked with a pronounced stoop –
the result, I expect, of lifting Miss Metcalfe’s
teacakes.
He spoke when he was given permission
- as if she had an invisible cigarette stuck
in the side of his mouth, a habit that gave
his speech a ventriloquial quality, so that
unsuspecting visitors to the shop would
often form the impression that it was not
he who had spoken to them but the plate of
hazelnut macaroons that sat on the left of the
counter, gathering dust.
These macaroons were not for sale, but
were an historical exhibit. They had served as
supplementary armoured cladding on the hull
of the HMS Hood when it was battling the
Bismarck.
Miss Metcalfe – true to the Yorkshire
stereotype – was incredibly thrifty with
ingredients. Neither the introduction of
rationing, nor its repeal, had made the
slightest difference to her recipes.
When you bought a currant bun from Miss
Metcalfe, you got just that – a bun with a
currant in it. The filling ran through her apple
pies like an ill-founded rumour. Once she
offered my mother a fruitcake we’d ordered
from her for Easter with the memorable
words: “It got a bit overdone, but you can
easily remove the black bits with a cheese-
grater.”
The quality of her goods made no
difference. Fear of Miss Metcalfe’s wrath
guaranteed repeat business. No villager
dared shop elsewhere.
When he reached the age of 80, Miss
Metcalfe’s brother risked a severe ear-
bashing by dying without her consent. Miss
Metcalfe elected to retire to Filey. The only
people who mourned her absence were local
manufacturers of protective footwear. No
winner of a Tees Businesswomen award will
come close to matching her, thank heavens.