Cross border shopping memories - ginger beer, orange Aero and not being shot

Being  a border county is not without its challenges but it has its advantages too.

And whichever side of the invisible boundary that we hail from, it has certainly contributed to our life experiences and cultural identity in a way that would be difficult for people from elsewhere to really understand.

While the majority of my experiences of visiting or passing through ‘the North’ are positive, one of my earliest memories is etched deeply in my mind.

We were on one of our regular trips to visit relatives in my mother’s native Monaghan but for some reason, we were not in my father’s usual car. He had borrowed a car from work, Flood’s Garage in Donegal Town. 

We were stopped at a checkpoint in Pettigo, and my father was asked for his registration number. Not being in his usual car, he didn’t know it offhand.

I don’t recall how the situation was resolved; all I remember is a soldier pointing a gun into the car and repeating the question. I was convinced that my father was going to be shot because he didn’t know the car registration.

It may be a coincidence but while my memory isn’t always great, I still tend to remember car registration numbers after just a quick glance. My developing brain must have learned at that young age that this was life or death information.

I don’t think I had much understanding at that time of what the reality of being shot would have been like. My imagination would have been fuelled by Saturday afternoon westerns where getting shot basically meant falling dramatically from a horse.

But that moment often came back to me in later childhood when there were news reports of people being shot dead, sometimes accidentally, at army checkpoints in the six counties. 

Nowadays, I still sometimes can’t quite believe that you can cross the border without even realising, and that a whole generation has grown up without seeing an armed soldier on the street.

There is still a long way to go, and peace is a fragile thing, but this is a change that most of us would never have believed to be possible.

Apart from that incident and a few bomb scares or evacuations, most of our trips into or through the six counties were full of excitement and anticipation. Be it a trip to visit relatives or a shopping excursion to Strabane, it was a change from the everyday.

And it meant something good was happening, particularly at this time of year. 

I remember admiring a bike in Wellworth’s in Strabane, and being gobsmacked to discover on Christmas morning that Santa had managed to deliver the exact same one. It was very cool in that you could turn a lever and fold it in half. Not that I had any real need to do so, but it was still a lot of fun!

A Twitter post that I saw recently reminded me of how significant the price differences on either side of the border became at Christmas.

The tweet from Gutter Bookshop in Dublin read: “Well that’s a first, guy just in to get a couple of packing boxes, flown in from UK to post his grandson's presents to Austria as it’s cheaper than posting them from UK and he doesn’t want them hit with the taxes. He paid £12 each way from Stansted. What a strange world we live in.”

The strange thing about this for me, having grown up in the border region, is that the person who posted the Tweet found this to be strange. It makes perfect sense.

Hopping across the border for cheaper postage was something that my mother did every year, back in the days when there were dozens or even hundreds of people on a Christmas card list. 

When the punt was in circulation, it wasn’t unusual to find sterling coins amongst change when shopping. My late mother diligently saved all the sterling coppers, and occasionally the silver, and then bought stamps in Strabane or Belleek at Christmas for the UK addresses. I remember her, completely unperturbed, handing over her little bank bags of 1p and 2p coins to pay for around 50 stamps. When I got a bit older, I was mortified. But of course I later realised we weren’t the only ones to do this, and it was a two-way street. It is no coincidence that there are post offices very close to the border on either side.  

Brexit and the resulting customs charges has meant that those of us posting to the UK may well opt to do so when we are in Derry, Strabane, Castlederg, Belleek etc, and our neighbours who wish to post within the EU can pop across to Donegal.

Back in the day, postage stamps were only the tip of the iceberg. Before the abolishment of duty on imported goods in the nineties, taking shopping across the border was a risky business that sparked a great sense of adventure and accomplishment.

It’s funny looking back and remembering things that were so typical at the time, though they seem a bit mad now. For example, my mother made and sold jam, and so travelling across the border, hoping we wouldn’t get caught with a dozen bags of cheap sugar stashed under the seats wasn’t unusual.

I remember my father taking a friend to buy a strimmer. The friend assured him that he had nothing to worry about, as my father would not have to actually drive it across the border. 

A little detour on the Fermanagh side of Pettigo ensured that the strimmer arrived in Donegal by being handed across bollards and put into the boot of another car. It was then collected from the same accomplice once we were well clear of the Customs hut. This was a well-oiled process and clearly a regular occurrence. 

Brexit has brought the possibility of a return to the need for such exchanges a little closer, but hopefully we won’t lose the freedom of movement of people and goods that we have enjoyed for more than 20 years. 

It would be a real shame to go backwards, though my best memories of cross-border shopping are of the little things - a set of pens from Wellworth’s that really stand out in my mind; ginger beer and orange Aero (both unheard of on this side of the border at the time); Belleek market on St Patrick’s Day; and as I got older, it was all about cheaper cigarettes and alcohol.

I’m more aware now of the importance of supporting the local economy, and the longer term price that is paid for that initial saving.

But the border is still a part of life here. 

It will be interesting to see how the younger generation remembers it in years to come.