In 1999 I visited Northern Ireland and had booked a self-catering cabin. I arrived in town around 5:30pm (Tuesday, I think) and had the devil’s own time finding a place to buy some food. Everything was closed. The restaurants were still open so I had a big dinner and shopped in the morning. It was quite a shock for me, as I live in an area where few grocery stores are ever closed.
One of the big selling points of those stores was that they were open on Saturday afternoon, not closed.
This was in contrast to the local shops which most definitely were shut on Saturday afternoon, all except for Post Offices, they opened at 2:00pm for an hour - I remember many a time standing and peering through the unlit windows at the clock, waiting for the last 5 minutes countdown to opening.
This meant that the city was extremely busy on Saturdays, and car ownership was much less then, so we all had to take bags and bags of shopping back home on the bus.
The supermarkets and out of town shopping centres didn’t exist, for single people who were working, Saturday afternoon was pretty much the only time you could do your weekly shop.
Right toward the end of a Saturday afternoon, you would go down the market and see what was being sold off cheap, which was a godsend to those on low incomes, but you just didn’t have to be too particular what you got.
You tended to only buy a very limited amount of meat, since most folk didn’t have freezers - so you’d get your Sunday joint and maybe some breakfast bacon, but meat you would get locally.
The Grace brothers store was pretty much an anachronism, I recall a couple of place like it, it had the principle elements of British comedy, lots of class distinctions, lots of innuendo and an out of date view in a modernising world - which would then lead to lots of comedic situations.