What store did you love to go to as a child?

'Going to the store’ immediately raises memories of tastes and smells and of the heady sense of empowerment and independence that comes with being allowed, as a young child, to make decisions. My earliest memories of going to the shops are of being with my Mum while we still lived in Langside, in Glasgow. The shops were just down the street and around the corner and I remember particularly the grocers which had what seemed to me an impossibly high marble counter.

If I stood on tiptoe I could reach the dry food stuffs that the grocer spilled from the jar as he weighed them out on the scale and transferred them to a paper ‘poke’. If I moisten a fingertip and dip into red lentils even today I can relive the taste and texture. Mum used to buy red lentils to put into soup. A family story tells that Mum sent me to the store to buy a loaf.

Bearing in mind that we left Langside when I was five, there must have been a great deal of trust that the streets and neighbourhood were safe to allow me to leave our flat - third floor- and go down through the ‘close’, along the street and round the corner on my own to the shop. It is said that came back bearing a pint of milk, saying that they had run out of bread so, “I just bought a pint of milk instead”. What did I say about independence and decision making?

Another store in Langside was Mr Palmer’s hardware store I recall the mingling smells of polishes, linoleum, coconut matting and coir brooms - the jumble of ’essentials’ he stocked. When we went to Alyth as children we seemed to have a lot of freedom which included going or being sent to the shops for 'messages'. Lingering in my memory is the smell of fresh bread and baking in Edwards’ bakery and grocery next door to Grandpas’ shop on Airlie Street and, unforgettable as a special treat, the flavour of the vanilla ice cream cone dipped in raspberry sauce at Delaquaglia's ice cream parlour on the square.

As an older child I think my favourite store was the bookshop in Whitley Bay. A 'Book Token' was a prized birthday gift and meant happy hours in a world of my own, deciding which book to add to my collection