[Margaret Pilkington]

You could choose your bacon, and have it sliced in just the way you wanted it.
Butter came in barrels. A lump was chopped off weighed and then patted with wooden paddles into a butter dish shape.(posh shops had moulds to shape the butter.....they were usually round and had a pattern on them)
Tea, coffee(which they would grind for you) and cocoa could be bought loose......weighed into blue sugar paper bags with the weight on the front....no name or brand on the bags.
Soap was also cut off a long block......green(olive soap) or red(carbolic soap).
Tongue and ham were sliced by hand with a sharp knife(hopefully not the one they had used to cut the soap) and again you could ask for it to be cut thin.
Biscuits.......if you wanted a pound of mixed biscuits you chose the ones you liked from the glass lidded tins....the grocery assistant would pick them out and put them in a paper bag. The name Huntley and Palmers springs to mind.

The floor was strewn with sawdust, which was swept up at the end of the day to be replenished with fresh stuff the folllowing morning.

Shops that were like this...Blowers in Church St, The co-op branches.......and Veevers...though if I remember rightly it seemed a more up market grocery store....not one that we frequented......though I did go in once or twice with my gran to buy Gold Dish Jaffa Juice.