The Corner Ice-Cream Shop.

There was a time when the name, "The Corner Ice-Cream Shop" was known throughout Bristle. I may be exaggerating a little - but it is only a little. As a child, this emporium was less than a mile from home and I would walk there to purchase a little happiness; as a child, The Old Lady would walk a couple of miles from her home. It had the same reputation that Luca's in Musselburgh has today. It also had the advantage of being just across the road from "The Swings." The Swings was a play park with a tall slide, not the puny thing there is now; a heavy round-a-bout that once started seemed to go on for ever and you could jump on it at speed if you had the courage, you could also jump, or fall, off it; and, for the piece de resistance, there was the top hat, a round-a-bout that hung from a high joint and so could swing backwards and forwards as it rotated and clanging as its frame bashed against the support pole.
I am not aware that anyone ever severed a limb on the top-hat but it must have been possible, indeed, most of the equipment must have been capable of causing severe injury to a small boy (or girl), but most of the injuries I remember could be cured with a visit to the shop.
Sis has the lasting memory of returning home, having fallen onto the gravelled surface, to endure the long and painful process of having TOL pick the gravel out of her wounds. Now that was worth an ice-cream.

I'm afraid I don't know when it transmogrified into a a barber's, but it must have been well after 1960 when I flew the nest. I did try Google but that took me to Cary Grant who, as a lad, probably also walked here to patronise this shop.

Today, I took the TOL's Buggy up to the new home, she'll want it when she joins "The Walking Group" on Saturday. It's too large to go in the car, so I had to drive it there. I suspect that those members of the public who saw me thought, "Poor man, and so young too." (In my dreams.) Anyway, they all stepped out of my way uttering profuse apologies.
By contrast, driving it through the home I was merely the victim of ribald comments.