Parkhead Cross - The City Bakeries

Thanks Stew for putting up the photo of Parkhead Cross.
Although this photo shown here was taken in Rothesay, it shows my little sister Shirley with me and our parents, Margaret & John MacWilliam. (Rothesay,circa 1960)

Who remembers The City Bakeries at Parkhead Cross? The fabulous confections made there were the stuff of dreams. My mum used to send me up there with a shopping list, and sometimes I was told to take my infant sister in her pram with me. This was supposed to give me some kind of domestic training or something. It was annoying since none of my friends were burdened with infant siblings in prams.

It was always boring to stand in the long queues in The City Bakeries. I remember one such day with great clarity. I was in a rush to get home and re-join a great game of "Rounders" that was being played in Edmiston Street - so I forgot all about the pram. I had rushed home, handed in the packages from The City Bakeries to my mum and was on my way back out the door when she called after me, asking if the baby was still asleep in her pram. What? The pram?

I had completely forgotten that I had even taken it with me in the first place.

This is my earliest memory of feeling pure terror.
I stammered out a vague reply - and I RACED back up Springfield Road to Parkhead Cross until I arrived at the City Bakery again and found my infant sister still sleeping peacefully among half a dozen other babies, all of whom were parked outside the Bakery in assorted prams. I soon returned baby and pram to the foot of our close, contrived to look and act innocent, and ran off to re-join the games.....

Now I had only to get through a couple of days of worry that some neighbour woman might have seen what happened and decide to tell my mum.

I kept this scary secret for more than two decades and my mum never knew about it until I was in my mid-thirties. It was about then she told me she had once done the same thing, leaving the pram outside Curley's on Springfield Road!

Looking back, it is amazing that our mothers regularly left infants in prams parked outside the shops, or at the close. Of course, one great thing about Glasgow was that there were plenty of fierce old battleaxes around who minded the general business of their neighbours and weren't afraid to challenge anybody who seemed out of place. (God Bless Them All.)

Did anybody from Newlands ever meet their first date at Parkhead Cross? I've heard it was a popular meeting place.
Liz.