Before World War 2, Fyffes had twenty-one ships specially designed to carry bananas. (By the way, the expression ‘Do you think I came up the Clyde on a banana boat?’ has nothing to do with bananas.) The Government banned banana imports in November 1940 so children like me – I was born in 1940 – did not know what a banana was. The ban on imports was lifted in September 1945 and in December 1945 ten million bananas arrived in Avonmouth on the Fyffes ship ‘SS Tilapa’. Children of my age had to be shown how to peel a banana and which part was for eating. I don’t know if any of that shipment reached Bathgate but I do remember arrivals soon after. Word would flash round the town -‘The Co-op has bananas!!!’ – and people would rush to Jarvey Street to join a great queue at the fruit shop. I don’t know when I had my first banana but I was told by a reliable and responsible adult that if I ate more than two a day it would kill me. When I was about ten, I saw in one of our picture houses a film on Pigmies. The narrator said, ‘These little people may eat between forty and sixty bananas every day.’ I thought, ‘How come it would kill me but it doesn’t kill them?’ Such are the mysteries of medical science.
I also remember that the first TV set to arrive in Bathgate was displayed in the Co-op Hall. We all crowded in to stare at this tiny black-and-white marvel. (I think this would be in 1952 because some people in Bathgate had TV sets in time to watch the Coronation in 1953.) Wilfred Pickles also did his radio show ‘Have a Go’ from the Co-op Hall. Violet Carson, who later starred as Ena Sharples in ‘Coronation Street’ may have been on piano. My granny always called her ‘Ena Shrapnel’.
Bathgate Old Times 