I popped in to see Marina in the shop she's renting over Christmas - partly so that Islay could see that Jasper the spaniel isn't there any more, and neither is Denny Parry with the dog biscuits.
The shop is up for sale, but it needs an awful lot doing to it. There's no water or sewerage at all, and when I looked up the stairs, I could see ancient wallpaper hanging off the walls. The stairs need a bit of work, too - the bottom three steps used to be under Denny Parry's counter, and then turned to go further up. Now those steps have been taken out completely, and Marina has piled some of her stuff up the remaining visible stairs as display space, so it's more or less impossible to get to the upper floor.
It's never been a big shop, and it's a bit of an odd layout, with the ramp across the middle of the floor, and two boarded up fireplaces hidden in the wall, one for each of the two rooms that it once was. Marina said that, before Denny Parry had it, it was a cycle repair shop, and the partition wall was where the ramp now is. The front part was the shop, and the repairs were done at the back. The back part has a concrete floor, but nobody's looked under the carpet yet to see what's going on at the front.
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Hi Lesley
This used to be part of the Madigan's Garage business. They had the garage on Swan Bank before J.V.Like & Sons.
The shop you are referring to (ex Denny Parry's)was the booking office for the Plaza Cinema which was situated at the rear of J.V.Like's garage. Mrs. Madigan used to take bookings for the Plaza set in a little opening in a wall at the back of this shop.
The queues for the Plaza in the 1940's and 50's used to stretch down through the garage complex and down Swan Bank (opposite The Swan Hotel) as far as Swan Cottages.
Ahh, Happy Days.
Eric Pugh
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