Nostalgia - Co-op Dividend Number

[Bealman]

Bit of a smudge down the bottom. Finger, maybe? Better crack open the AI   

[Thorpe Parva]

My Mother's was 2217. In the 50s I was often sent to the Co-op in Burbage (Leics) so it's always stuck in my memory.

[joe cassidy]

When I was a teenager I worked for the Co-Op "on the milk" weekends and school holidays.

They paid me £5 for a weekend.

You could get a fair few pints for that in those days

[Bealman]

You could, too! 

[cmason]

Yeah, I remember those I think Binns in Sunderland or Newcastle had em.

Sad thing - the last Binns was in Darlo and indeed I took Mam shopping there not many years back however it seems it finally close its doors, after 100 year, at the end of 2024   

[The Q]

My main memory of our local Co-Op is not the divi number, but having to give your money to the counter staff who then put it into an overhead wire-powered container which "shot" it by spring power to the cashier sealed inside an office. You then waited for your change and receipt to be sent back.
Later, a large department store (Fairfax House) was opened in central Bristol which used pneumatic tubes to send the money instead.

I qualified to service the vacuum systems..
The biggest problems were foreign objects in the tubes.
Coffee grounds at one Tesco's, the tube entrance was next to the waste bin in one coffee shop.
And a tent support in another!! Yep they put up a permanent tent / gazebo by drilling a hole in a car park.. straight through the tube to the garage.

[GlenEglise]

Were the amount of digits on your Divi Number different across different CO-OPs?

I thought ours in Perth Scotland had five numbers although that may have been our shared line telephone number!

I remember the vacuum tubes but also the string pulley system of transferring cash and receipts to the cashier.

Goodness, how we have advanced in seventy years.

GE

[Trainfish]

It's threads like this which remind me how old some of you are as I don't remember Co-op dividends at all 

[Greygreaser]

It's threads like this which remind me how old some of you are as I don't remember Co-op dividends at all 

I've seen 3 monarchs, 2 coronations as well as steam trains! Oh and searchlights, sirens and air raid shelters but just missed National Service having deferred it by 3 years to get my Agric Eng qualification. Can remember Suez Cyprus and Korea having 'problems' which the UK got involved with as well as the Cuban crisis and the Iron curtain.
How we survived childhood without an NHS and got educated with rote learning I'll never know! Boy Scouts competed with Air cadets, Sea scouts and the Boys Brigade for our attention and time and paper rounds were sought like the Yukon gold fields as the means to wealth!
If you had a push bike you had 'wheels', a motorcycle was impressive and anything with 4 wheels and an engine the bee's knees! My first vehicle was an FX3 Austin cab ex-London with a thumping diesel engine which took a bit of starting. If we went anywhere above about 3 miles it was a bus, 20 miles it was train but then Leicester had 3 main stations linked by LMS LNER and GNR(M&GN) to just about every sizeable town and city.
You walked everywhere else and spoke to anyone you knew all without social media! (But my Mum always somehow knew who I'd seen before I got home!)
If you saw a policeman he was a local Bobby and probably knew who you were so it was not easy to get the wrong side of the law. Older people and wealthy people demanded respect and mostly got it although it often wasn't deserved. Post war we relied on cheaper food and passing down clothes which were not too worn. Treats were a tin of sliced peaches and evaporated milk as a topping after Sunday tea. The roast always lasted 3 days - hot Sunday, cold Monday and minced Tuesday and the fruitcake baked alongside on Sunday was still served until about Thursday - as hard as nails!
Winter of '46 the inside of the bedroom windows had a layer of ice where the moisture from our breath had frozen. There was only one fire in the living room and everywhere else in the house was cold, so to stop the outside toilet freezing there was a paraffin lamp alongside the lead water pipe going up to the cistern. It was a pleasure to get to school as there was a big coal-fired boiler which heated the classrooms through those huge cast radiators - but boy was it cold leaving to go home. The gas lamps were being phased out in the 50s But we still had fogs and smogs to contend with if it was dark on the way home from school or the paper round.
I hope I've triggered some others to recount a few memories as the current youngsters won't understand what changes we've experienced since the end of WW2. My current go to Facebook page is "Leicester Born and Bred" if you want a flavour of our memories.

[Bealman]

And we got to see the first moon landing!*

*Unless you're one of those oxygen thieves who believe it never happened 

[Trainfish]

And we got to see the first moon landing!*

*Unless you're one of those oxygen thieves who believe it never happened 

Oh, I've not been called one of those before. Not that I know of anyway