Another important thing the war has done is to break
down the British traditional resistance to eating in publics
Large sections of the population would seldom or never eat in
public places. British restaurants and Communal Feeding Centres,
which have grown up all over the country since the war, are
teaching people that you can still enjoy your meal if you sit
down at a long table next to someone you've never met before and
have lunch and a talk at the same time. In 1939, few towns or
villages wanted communal feeding centres. To-day, the great
majority of the public want them and can get them. There has
been an enormous increase in the number of meals served in
Industrial canteens, for instance — it's now over 20 million
a week. There are an over increasing number of British
Restaurants, which are Government and administered by the
local authorities. They serve exceptionally good meals exceptionally
cheap in pleasant rooms, with flowers on the tale and music.
The new American tinned foods which have been dis-
tributed throughout the country during the past few weeks have
been received with much pleasure. About a third of families
studied have actually bought these new American foods, with
their strange names, Spam, Prem and so on. Over 90% of those
who have bought them, liked them. In peacetime you never would
have got people to experiment with new foods, like that.
Shopping galleries had existed since the sixteenth century in London and were magnificent buildings housing collections of hundreds of tiny, expensively stocked shops with narrow walkways between them which became fashionable social sites for walking. By the end of the century, showrooms, where customers could browse away from the main sales areas of the shop, had become important additional spaces in top class shops. Some shops aimed themselves at either male or female shoppers, depending on what they sold and used their fittings to appeal to their particular target groups. Shopkeepers sought to entice and manipulate through their sales patter, the design and layout of the retail space, through display and the attraction of goods, and the architectural design of shop front.
Not all shopping was for mundane items: shopping for pleasure and entertainment was as much a pastime in the eighteenth century as it is today. It was a sociable activity that could be carried out with friends and family, and for those who could afford to shop in fashionable areas, it also could become a matter of personal display as well as self expression. Sociability in shopping however was not just a matter of wealth and elaborately constructed shops, it was an aspect of shopping at the market, in the street with friends and family, or gossiping in the local corner shop. Shops were also acceptable sites for men and women to meet, whether respectably or illicitly. Pleasurable, personal shopping was as important for men as it was for women, though their styles of socialising when they shopped differed; men tending to shop alone or with one other man, while women tended to shop in large groups. It is highly likely that women were associated with shopping in this period, not only because they bore the brunt of mundane shopping, but also because they tended to shop in publicly visible female groups, for which they were often satirized. Men, however, were as frequent shoppers for personal items as were women, and men form the greater bulk of those taking shopping trips to Paris to make purchases for themselves, as well as for friends and family at home.
