The Document is reproduced with kind permission of: Mr Ken Harris.

It also appeared in the December,2007 issue of the `Thornbury Magazine`.

NOT JUST ANOTHER POUND IN THE TILL.

Susie has come home to stay – she is aged thirty-eight now, and seems to enjoy being home again. Some years ago she was very much part of Victoria and Alexandra`s lives, when they were children. Soon, when David has more time available, he will be able to enjoy Susie`s company more fully – and Jane will approve. Susie is a little Shetland pony, and has now reached the grand age of thirty-eight. When David and Jane Smith`s daughters were small, they learned to ride Susie, and since they grew up, the little pony has been spending her time with other families and their children. She has come back home to Alveston now, and when he retires at the early part of next year, caring for her will help to fill David`s hours.

The lower end of Thornbury High Street will seem quite different when David Smith closes his Tailor and Outfitters shop finally, for he has run his business in the town sice 1970. “Can you come up and see me on Saturday afternoon?” he replied, when I requested an appointment for an interview for this piece … “it`s always dead in the shop on a Saturday afternoon.” As luck would have have it, the interview took three times as long as usual, because customers kept popping into the shop. When I peeped into David`s office at the back of the shop, where I expected to find him, I was a little startled to see the bottom half of a man standing by the window – just a dummy dressed in a pair of smart flannels.

David Smith was born when his parents lived at Almondsbury – his father also names David, had a business in Bristol selling Ladies and Gentlemen`s clothing, and it seemed inevitable that one day the son would enter the business. He has a brother who lives at Stapleton, and two sisters who live at Aust and Wootton Bassett. Yet, from an early age, David had wanted to become a farmer – his mother came from a farming family. From the age of six, till he was fourteen, David was educated at a boarding school – St. Briavel`s Castle, across The Severn. Then he was a student at King`s School, Bruton in Somerset until he was seventeen.

After leaving school, David worked for a year for a firm of Accountants in Baldwin Street, Bristol where his duties involved accountancy and auditing, then for the following year he joined his father`s business. Then came National Service with the RAF, initially at Cardington, west of Bridgnorth in Shropshire. He had high hopes of being posted to the Far East, but as he said with a chuckle, “In fact I spent the remaining 19 or 20 months at RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire.

David`s family had known Jane Kinloch`s family in Almonsbury for a long while, and it was on 6 September 1969 that they were married at the church at Almondsbury. Jane and David set up home at Alveston where they still reside.They were to have two daughters – Victoria, who now works at The Meningitis Research Office in Midland Way, and Alexandra, who is a fingerprint officer with Avon and Somerset Police. Exactly two weeks prior to my meeting David for this interview, he was in his role as Father of the Bride at Victoria`s wedding, also at Almondsbury Church. He proudly showed me some photographs handed in that afternoon by a wedding guest.

It was in 1970 that David opened his first business at 3 The Plain, Thornbury, and in 1978 he moved into his well-known shop at the bottom of High Street. This is a treasure trove of jackets, coat, hats, ties, shirts, trousers, suits, socks, gloves, scarves, boots, shoes, underwear – and anything missed from this list. The names Viyella, Barbour, Musto, Harry Hall, Magee, Christy, Bladen – with apologies to others omitted – are labels David has lived with for all this time. The words “quality” and “personal service” have always been evident. Indeed, partway through the interview the doorbell gave its distinctive warning that someone had stepped over the threshold, and David went out into the shop to meet a gentleman he had been expecting. This customer had been measured for a special lightweight jacket he was to wear as Best Man at a family wedding in Australia. It seems the gentleman was much larger in build than the shopkeeper himself, but before long, a beaming David popped back into the office to fetch an invoice, wearing the said jacket, which rather hung off him. “Fits him perfectly!” he delightedly informed me.

In addition to serving customers in the shop, David and Jane have been in attendance at twelve or fourteen Country Shows per year in many places. Furthest from Thornbury has been the four-day Royal Welsh Show at Builth Wells and the two-day event at Newbury. Their Stand will be missed by many hundreds of folk all round the countryside.

There are a number of local matters which David has been involved with over the years. He is on the Board of Trustees of Almondsbury Hospital (there are still funds to administer), is Treasurer of Berkeley Point-to-Point Committee, Chairman of Almondsbury Gymkhana, Treasurer of Thornbury Chamber of Trade and a member of Thornbury Christmas Lights Committee. For eleven years, in the 1990s he was a local Justice of the Peace,relinguishing his duties when the Magistrates Court was transferred to Yate, because he firmly believed that to administer “local justice” one needed knowledge of a local area. To illustrate his point he recalled a case some years ago which involved a vehicle collision in Haw Lane, between Old Down and Olveston. After hearing the morning`s business in Court, the magistrates drove to Haw Lane in their lunch break, to see for themselves the precise place in question, then in the afternoon were able to deliver an informed judgement. Jane was a qualified Nursery Nurse, and has also been involved with charities such as Action Research, which is concerned with infant health. For twentyfive years, she has been a member, including a period as Chair, of The Independent Monitoring Board at Eastwood Park Prison at Falfield.

When David was just three years old he had his first pony, and horse riding has been a major passion all his life. He very much enjoys gardening, especially producing vegetables. Anything to do with wild life is of great interest to him, and one of the ambitions that he and Jane have, when retirement allows more time, is to go on a safari in Africa. He is a keen viewer of David Attenborough`s television programmes.

Doubtless, David`s many regular and loyal customers will feel great disappointment when the Tailor and Outfitter premises closes (unless a purchaser will be found to continue the same line of business). For a while David and Jane will not find it easy to adjust to life without the six-days-a-week routine of the shop. It has offered them and their customers the kind of shopkeeper/customer relationship which has been so much part of the life of a town like Thornbury, but is lessening. Mention of The Mall causes raised eyebrows with David – “Oh, I`ve been there,” he says, seeming to want to change the subject. “You see, I`ve tried to think of each customer as not just another pound in the till”.

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