Running 'messages'

I do not know if this has been mentioned before, did anyone run messages? I cannot remember when I started running messages but Ii think I was about 11 yrs old. Arriving home from school I would change into play clothes then shoot out of the house and run up Vine Street. If a front door was open you would go inside and find a shopping bag on the table with a list of things to get from the shop. The list being the "message". Along with this would be some money. You would take the money, bag and list and go to the grocers or wherever, get everything on the list and then take the shopping back to the house. Plonking everything back on the table you would take "thrupence" for your time and trouble out of the change. If it involved going to two shops,ie, grocers and butchers, that was a double "message" so you would take a "tanner". The reason "run" comes into it is because the faster you ran, the more "messages" you could do before someone else got there before you. My sister, who is five years older than me, had never heard of it but my mother-in-law who lived in Silverstone ran "messages" the same way before the war. Did anyone else do so? Bit different to now, as nobody would leave their front door open, let alone trust a stranger by leaving money on the table!!! Prob take the table as well.

That's interesting as I can't remember hearing about "messages" all the 20 years being brought up in Coventry. In 1970 I came to Scotland to work in the Hewlett-Packard factory at South Queensferry near Edinburgh. I would sometimes meet some of the factory workers in the village on Saturday morning. "Is that you away oot for yer messages, son?" Didn't know what they were talking about at first. The shopping list is "yer message line" and the shopping bag is "yer message bag, for tae put yer messages in". Och Aye, Hugh

My parents were Scottish and lived in Coventry over 60 years, they used to send me for the messages. It was my job to go to the butchers and greengrocers on a Saturday. I smiled when I read Rootes 66 comment, I used to take a 'message bag' with me. Unlike Mattash I didn't get paid!!

I use to run errands for neighbours, we would get 1d, 3d or 6d knock the doors to get some pocket money, also for mum and dad, mum sent me and my friend Michael Miles over Jubilee Crescent when we were around 6 to get some sausages from Palethorpes butchers, we ate most of them raw too, before getting back home, I went through the back door, gave mum the sausages, she unwrapped the paper they were wrapped in, seen the few that were left, asking where are the rest, I confessed we had eaten them, I got a good hiding and was sent back over to get more without being paid for the errand.

Yes Morgana, that was a treat given the chance. I would suck the end and leave the skins though. I wouldn't dream of it now. Mind you they probably tasted better then. Regarding the messages, I use to take a ladies daily bread to her house and she gave the 3 pence. That was when mum looked after the grocer's shop and she had to make up orders in boxes but they were delivered by an adult. I wish the young mums of today could go back in time and see how times have changed.