As the run up to Christmas begins, Mike met up with owner of High Street boutique Charlotte Grace. There must be something in the water in Highfield Drive. Last time I was there with my Hurst Life pad and sharpened pencil in hand, Nick Bartlett’s boyish looks defied his age. This time when Linda told me she moved to Sussex when she was 21, almost 40 years ago, I stepped in to correct her maths; but it was correct and I was once again issuing clumsy compliments.
Growing up in North London, the first three years of her working life will be familiar to many who were raised in the capital: “It was nightclubs in Leicester Square, Bacardi’s and Coke, which I think was the cheapest drink available then, and taking the night bus home.” Her first Saturday job was in Wood Green as a runner for a retailer. “This gentleman had two clothes shops and one was bit more upmarket than the other. The five Saturday girls were very ‘hard-sell’ and often they would phone the other shop to check for an item.” This is where Linda came in as she’d rush to the other shop, meeting their Saturday girl halfway they would swap items. All the while the customer was ‘being held hostage’ back at the store. I was disproportionately pleased for some reason when Linda revealed what she did in America for a month after leaving school, whilst staying with an aunt in California. It would be a stretch to say it was an ambition of mine to meet someone who sold encyclopaedias door-to-door but I was pretty sure it was never going to happen. And it was every bit American as I thought it would be. “They gave us a road each and told us ‘This is your dream, you have to dream’, and we carried a photo with us of something to strive for, in my case a Mercedes. I didn’t sell one single encyclopaedia but it didn’t matter because it’s my aunt’s company. In fact, I’m not sure I even got to enter anyone’s house; it was my aunt who had the gift of the gab, not me.”
On returning from her six-month American trip, she got a job in the Oxford Street branch of Debenhams selling umbrellas in the run up to Christmas before Find, follow and share us on Facebook, Twitter and taking up her first proper job with a Japanese bank. “I was transferring millions of yen in and out every day, essentially just number crunching, and it was very boring, so I only lasted nine months.” She applied for three-month post at Rentokil and ended up staying five years.
It was in the East Grinstead branch of Rentokil that she met her husband Bob and they moved to Haywards Heath, in a flat above The Orchards, which was ‘great for people watching’. Linda worked for a market research company concentrating on product pick up and quality control for Coca-Cola. They would collect samples from Zambia or Nigeria, for example, and send them back to Coca-Cola for analysis. “Being able to walk to work was a big bonus. We actually slept through the storm of ’87 and in the morning, I climbed over fallen oak trees on my way work.”
During this time, she was keeping her hand in at retail, doing shows at weekends, selling clothes and jewellery amongst other things. She had a stall at Mabel’s Emporium in Burgess Hill and her dining room was one huge stock-room. But the weekend show scene was a quite a lot of work for slender returns and she was looking for an alternative. “I was driving past the empty shop on the High Street in February, just before lockdown and I thought, ‘why not?’. I had all the stock, so I went for it.” November 2021 She opened on the 3rd March 2020 and the country went into lockdown on the 21st but Linda is very philosophical about it, taking the view that everyone was in the same boat. The new challenge now, with disruptions to shipping and transport, is getting deliveries on time. Charlotte Grace stocks a mixture of clothing, gifts, greetings cards and jewellery for all budgets and tries to appeal to all age groups.
To read the whole story of Linda and Charlotte Grace Casuals pick up a copy of November’s Hurst Life and turn to page 22.