Shops don’t smell any more!

With the exception of the overpowering scent of perfume counters of the larger department stores I cannot think of a shop that smells of its produce. Is it my sense of smell or are smells no longer an acceptable part of selling? In the past there seemed to be all sorts of odours when you wandered into the shops. I can recall, for example, the local Irwins (the grocers) where you could tell whether you were at the cheese counter or the meat counter without even opening your eyes. But the best smell of all was to be found in the Coopers Building in Church Street in “town” (Liverpool). It is the tall, crenulated, black (with soot) building in the middle of this early 1950s picture. Note the tramlines and the trams - these were on their last legs and disappeared from the city in 1957.



Coopers was a grocers but the overpowering smell as you walked through the door was of coffee being ground. It must rank as one of my top ten smells and any time we were in town I used to ask Mum or Dad to take me into Coopers irrespective of whether we actually needed anything from there. Pity we can’t put smells on the Internet or I could let you share my memory!