Store of memories

REMEMBER those wonderful all-purpose shops of your childhood? The high counters, the fascinating objects hanging from the ceiling, the mysterious cardboard boxes on shelves, the tins and jars and packages piled on the floor? Remember when the grocer actually weighed out sugar into blue paper bags, or gave you a ration of broken biscuits at half price? Remember when your shopping list included custard powder, castor oil, washing soda, sweets, a galvanised bucket, bread, the daily paper and the latest gossip - and you could get them all in one establishment without ever having to enter the doors of a huge soulless supermarket?

Those days are gone, you say. No they aren't. Not quite, anyway. The old-fashioned store still exists, and it can be found under a corrugated-iron roof in Inchigeelagh, West Cork. It's delightful, it's wonderful, it's all you ever needed. But hurry. We don't know how much longer it will still be there.

John O'Sullivan is the present proprietor, having inherited the family tradition from his parents. His mother had an even wider involvement in the community, being the local midwife for over 45 years. Dorothy, or 'Dora', as she was affectionately known, must have seen most of the population of the surrounding countryside into the world. 'Twas often you'd get a farmer knocking at the window in the middle of the night, and off she'd go in his horse and cart and we wouldn't see her until morning.'

And how were John and his brothers and sisters ushered into the world themselves? John scratches his head. 'Well, I don't know the answer to that. Maybe she managed by herself.' Dora's contribution to Inchigeelagh and it's neighbourhood is preserved in the very Gladstone bag which she used to carry to confinements. John has hung it from the roof of the shop with a handwritten notice which gives its history and emphasises that it is not for sale. Some things are beyond price and his family history is one of them.

But everything else is for sale. And what a range of goods he has to offer. Ancient and modern, survival and luxury, relics of the old days and examples of the new. Beans, batteries and Bisto. Brushes, bandages, buckets and Bex-tartar. Bar opties, blue stone, bicycles and boots. Castor oil, crockery and corsets. Mousetraps and moss peat. Spades for turf, spades for silage and sulphate of ammonia. Secondhand books and secondhand furniture. Tennis rackets and paint. Biscuits, chocolate, flour, sugar and those wonderful old-fashioned boiled sweets - bullseyes, clove drops, satin cushions - that you last saw when you were five years old with a whole threepence to spend. And yes, he weighs them out on to a real scales and pours them into a real brown paper bag. I tell you in a shop like this, you suddenly realise what you've been missing all these years.

Is business as good as it used to be? "Well no, there's not so much of it these days. The women, they've gone fierce fussy. They're all doing their own driving now, and they must be going off to these big supermarkets in Macroom or even Cork. They don't just want the plain things any more, they want to be able to pick and choose. I tell you, in the old days they were glad to be able to get the things if you had them. Nowadays they're spoiled, that's a fact."

As if to contradict him, several customers come in all at once. A farmer demands a pound of "that there washing soda". John O'Sullivan invades the dark fastnesses at the rear of the shop and scoops the required amount from a barrel into a plastic bag. Two ladies confer confidentially over the quality of tinned peas; one suddenly recalls another requirement and requests a bag of sugar which is unearthed from under the counter. You feel he would prefer to weigh it from a sack, but times have changed. Pleasantries are exchanged, tidbits of local gossip passed on. The totals are calculated, the change handed over.

"It used to be a lot busier here in times gone by. We had all the carriage trade on its way through to Glengarriff. There was an English colony in Glengarriff those days and they had lots of visitors. Oh, we were kept very busy then. There were eight shops in Inchigeelagh and all of them with enough custom to keep them going."

The O'Sullivans diversified a long way back, acquiring and running the Lake Hotel as well as the shop. The family still runs the hotel, one of the oldest in the area, and even now, as lunchtime approaches, Mrs. O'Sullivan is preparing a warming dinner in the hotel kitchen while her husband sets about locking up for the midday break. But he has a few more things to call to our attention first.

"Look at these corsets now. Fine garments, fit to be worn by the best." He reaches for a faded box on a high shelf and extracts the contents from ancient tissue paper. "I tell you, the young ones today should try these."

He holds the 1920's - style lingerie up for admiration. "Or is it repairs around the house you were thinking of? I'd say I've got everything you need." He then lifts down boxes of nails, screws and hinges, all of which can be purchased in the exact number you require.

"My parents used to stock furniture here as well. Secondhand furniture you know. It was the only way the people could get the stuff. They'd let my mother know that they were needing a table or chairs or something, and off she'd go to Cork and buy what she saw and bring it back on the lorry we had in those days. Nobody saw anything wrong in secondhand furniture then. It was made to last. Now these young ones, they won't have anything old - it's all got to be new and up to date."

Time to go. In West Cork you meddle with meal times at your peril, and over at the Lake Hotel, dinner is waiting for the store manager. We buy a quarter of boiled sweets (the traditional extra one thrown in for luck) and reluctantly take our leave. John O'Sullivan leans over his half door, newspaper in hand, to see us off. 'Mind you come back and buy something else soon now. I've some grand boots would suit you fine."

In modern Ireland, we need shops like this. They are a reminder both of where we came from and what really counts. Oddly, the only other place you will enounter such places is in rural backwater America. Despite being the worlds richest nation, they still regard the all-purpose country store with it's wide range of goods as vital to the community. We should realise what we've got before it's too late and preserve places like O'Sullivans shop as part of our national heritage. Do you really prefer anonymous supermarkets?