大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Barnsley Archives and Local Studies Department on behalf of J Hector Woffinden and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."
During the war I was in a reserved occupation being a chemist in a steel works at Brightside, Sheffield. Towards the end of the war when war news was tensing to be more favourable we were given short holidays. Previous to this period holidays were out of the question (a day or two being the norm) and for a very long time after the 鈥淧honey War鈥� period 7 days work per week was the order.

At this time my father had an off licence business and although suppliers of beer etc were not officially rationed they were restricted and many people would tour the area looking for shops who had supplies of beer for sale.

My father did his own rationing so that he had small amounts of beer to sell each day rather than all his allocation on one day, as it was easy to do and which many other licensees did, which enabled them to close early and have more free time.

However my father always reserved quantities of beer for his regular customers and he had one particular lady customer who was a Guinness drinker and she had learnt how to read the date on the Guinness label. The date was changed each day of bottling so that any one who knew how to read the label could tell when the stout had been bottles. This lady always insisted that her delivery should bear the label with the date a week older than the optimum date.

One Whit weekend I was given 4 days holiday so I persuaded my father and stepmother to go away for a few days whilst I stayed and 鈥渓ooked after鈥� his business.

Before leaving he had informed me where he had stacked 鈥淢rs H鈥檚鈥� (the Guinness Lady) bottles and then he departed telling me not to sell that particular batch. Being in charge must have gone to my head because when the lady rang up for her usual order to be delivered I found that I had sold the reserved bottles of stout and we had only the new stock to sell. Not being able to do anything else I therefore delivered 4 dozen of the 鈥榥ew鈥� bottled stout. Sure enough a few hours after I had made the delivery I received a 鈥榩hone call, I had delivered the wrong stout, which was awful and would I collect same and take her bottles with the correct date of bottling.

So I collected her stout and on my way back to the shop taxed my brain on what I could do to correct my 鈥渂loomer鈥�. I decided that it was odds on that she couldn鈥檛 really tell the difference between one weeks bottling and the next and was really showing off her knowledge on being able to read the date on the bottle. On arrival back at the shop I collected all the empty Guinness bottles, which bore the 鈥渃orrect鈥� date on the label, soaked them off and then placed them on the bottles which had been returned and a few hours later, after the labels had dried, I re-delivered them and waited the results. Sure enough I did receive another 鈥榩hone call thanking me for delivering the correctly date Guinness and to inform me that it was lovely. Just proves that with other things that people drink with their eyes. 鈥� and my father did not lose a valuable customer.

The incident taught me a lesson too; I never made a similar mistake again.

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