Memories Of A Message Boy

Burnett & Forbes, 3b High Street, Nairn, 1961-63

Reminiscences of Kenneth Burnett, formerly of Dunollie, Albert Street, Nairn

I started my first after-school job at the grand age of 11, delivering ‘messages’ for my father’s shop, working alternate weeks with my brother Andrew. We job-shared before the term was even thought of, our week’s wages of £1.5/-  meaning we each earned twelve shillings and sixpence weekly for two hours each day after school and all day Saturday. ­ Our sole mission was to deliver elaborately and very neatly wrapped parcels containing anything from cotton reels, buttons and bows to cashmere jumpers, duvets, or suits by Simpsons of Piccadilly: the best that Burnett & Forbes, drapers to the gentry, could offer. Propriety demanded that all goods sold be delivered promptly, safely and dry, on the very day of their purchase, for free, no additional charge.  Heaven forfend that we should fail in this task. At the end of each week Elizabeth in the office would hand down our wages – one pound five shillings – and whichever of us was ‘on’ that week would toddle home to hand over the entire fortune to our mother , who’d deduct five shillings from each of us as our ‘keep’, a further five shillings each she’d put in the bank for our futures, leaving us two shillings and sixpence we could each keep to spend as the fancy took us – a considerable advance on the one and tuppence pocket money we’d received up till then (the extra tuppence was for making our beds each day). We were rich!

Burnett & Forbes had been started by my grandfather Robert Burnett sometime around the end of the First World War. A wise businessman, Grandad had married his partner Miss Forbes early in the establishment of the enterprise and Bobby, my dad, was born soon after. Grandad would still drop into the shop on occasion, causing much fuss and consternation in the process, but by the time we were installed as message boys (to further drain the business’s flagging fortunes) the firm was run by my dad, with nominal assistance from his wayward younger brother Gavin who, while he could give an outwardly competent impression if he wished to, really didn’t take such responsibility willingly or seriously. My father Bobby worked all his life in ‘the shop’ and knew its business inside out (customers would remark that he resembled more than a little the character of Captain Peacock in BBC TV’s Are you being served?, but that was much, much later). Other than serving occasional customers, wrapping parcels for us to deliver seemed to me to be the main activity at B&F. Such was the precision, neatness and seriousness with which my dad approached the task he could have wrapped parcels for Scotland.  Arriving fresh from school we’d find the day’s accumulated parcels awaiting us, neatly arranged in piles, with priority parcels on the top. Our parcels were popular. Mrs Svensson, an elderly gentlewoman in reduced circumstances would order perfume from Boynes the chemist then send it round for my father to wrap it neatly, for me to then deliver it all the way to her home in Highland Cottages, where she would open it in solitude. I’m not aware that she ever paid for this service, but she would invariably invite me in and give me a biscuit.

The shop was  rarely busy. Both men infallibly wore suits, shirts and ties at work, while the women wore dark, formal uniforms – navy jumper, white blouse and tartan skirt. It always surprised me that Bobby and Gavin got on so well. My father was strict, formal, proper and straight-laced, with no time for frivolity. Uncle Gavin was entirely irreverent, up for any jape or devilment.  He must have been hell to manage, but I never saw them fall out.

A plastic carrier bag from Burnett & Forbes

Most of the day the men just stood about in their suits, arms behind them, waiting for someone to come into the shop. People did, and were dealt with, but there was seldom a rush and frequent idle moments when they would just look at each other across the serried ranks of suits and jackets, or the carefully aligned rows of neatly pressed trews. A permanent installation in the office at the back of the shop was Elizabeth, the cashier, who wielded far more power than her station demanded, and to whom we had to report. But you couldn’t refer to the office as the back office, because ‘the back shop’ was that area even further in the rear, through an intimidating entranceway, where the womenswear department was. Mary managed the back shop. Her domain was strictly off limits to the likes of Andrew and me, because in there, wall to wall, were lurid displays of women’s underwear, svelte models with pert busts, great voluminous knickers and massive elasticated brassieres.  For us loons these were forbidden fruits indeed, but all were displayed in such a way as to be anything but attractive even to our oversized imaginations. Fear of what went on – or came off – through that intimidating portal kept us out very effectively. Upstairs, behind the back shop, was the store, where discarded busts and outmoded mannequins from the 1930s were stored in jumbled heaps just in case they would one day miraculously come back in fashion, which of course they never did. To my memory, everything about the shop was old-fogeyish, with smells and sights from ages long gone by, reminiscent of black and white Ealing comedies. Old lace, without the arsenic.

We message boys delivered to all corners of the town and in all weathers too. One house, called Thistledome, particularly fascinated me. Why would anyone call their house by such a weird name? My aunt Janet lived just down the road from ‘Thistledome’ so I asked her, and she punctuated the name for me. This’ll do me. Thistledome! I remember laughing all the way down Seabank Road on my wobbly message bike, heading back to the shop. Happy days!

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