I used to cut up meat and make mince in a big mincing machine, and make sausages. Depending on which sausages we were making, I used to cut up various pieces of pork or beef and add secret ingredients and mix it all up by hand in a big metal bowl. With one hand I then put it in the machine and pushed it through with a wooden plunger, and caught it in the skin with my other hand. I then plaited up the sausages and hoped 8 sausages weighed 1lb.
I used to deliver meat around the town carrying a big wicker basket, and remember a lovely housebound lady always gave me 6d tip. I also delivered to Longs Wharf and Yew Trees when it was a hotel. Mollie delivered meat by van out in the country.
Jim used to put sawdust on the butcher’s block at the end of the day and scrub it with a metal brush. That made a lovely noise and it would look like new again.
I always went home with sawdust on my shoes as the floor was covered in it, but Mum was used to it as Dad was a carpenter, and she’d worked in Ablitts when she left school in 1936.
M.S. b 1949