On the Eighth Day on Oxford Road in the April of 1973

I have very fond memories of the “Eighth Day” on Oxford Road.  

I somehow missed the first shop on Brown Street but when it reopened in 1972 opposite All Saints it was the place we regularly visited.

It was at that time still a craft exchange place where all sorts of exotic and fascinating things were on offer.  Here were those wonderful loon pants we all seemed to wear, the packets of incense, odd looking jewellery and the bottles of scent including strawberry much favoured by my girlfriend.

The place was cluttered seeming to lack any organisation and I never really trusted the stairs to the upper floor.  But it was just perfect and for the two of us from very conventional working class backgrounds exploring all that student life had to offer this was part of that alternative life style.

Now there will be some who deride what it stood for and others who re-acted with violent scorn at the time to its presence which was and remains a shame.  But I guess that has much to do with the way it challenged their beliefs and made them uncomfortable.

I remember a laid back happy place where people just got on with what they wanted to do.

I do occasionally call in at the restaurant which it developed into.  It remains a co-operative dealing in wholesale and vegetarian food and as its statement says “exists to encourage the optimum health of its customers and staff by providing quality vegetarian food and advice, whilst maintaining a caring, sustainable, democratic and ethical business environment for its workers.”

Which is fine.  I became a vegetarian in the mid ‘80s continue to share the ideals expressed in the statement and while I miss that old rambling shop see much that my younger self would have believed in at the new place.

And perhaps it is well that they don’t sell loons anymore.  The thought that with my ever expanding waist line this 74 year old should be tempted to buy a pair is I guess best left in the past.

Picture; On the Eighth Day, 111 Oxford Road, in April 1973, picture by H. Milligan, H.,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m00173, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass