“The shop holds so many happy memories, it was heart wrenching to let it go”
Colin Rimmer with his son Joe outside the shop in Penny Lane
For over 60 years Colin Rimmer has seen the same faces from the same community, day in, day out. Those faces have seen him grow from a young boy into a husband, dad and a grandad.
He’s shared a lifetime’s worth of memories over the past six decades through Rimmers of Penny Lane, the shop his dad bought in 1963 and which he took over in 1990.
But now, 66-year-old Colin has said an emotional farewell to the community he knows so well after handing over the keys to his much-loved local convenience store and will be enjoying his retirement with his wife Karen and his children and grandchildren.
Colin told the ECHO how he was just four years old when his dad, William, quit his job as a shipping clerk on the Liverpool docks and decided to “try his hand” at something new.
He said: “He had no idea what he was doing when he took it over. He just knew he wanted to do something different and had a total change in career.
“He’d never done anything like it before, it was completely alien to our family but he never regretted it for one second. And, I’ve never regretted it either.”
Rimmers of Penny Lane was the centre of Colin’s young life and he fondly remembers being in the shop when he was a child. Eventually in 1990, William retired and Colin took over the shop, after he’d graduated from university.
He said: “It’s a completely different shop now to when my father bought it, it has doubled in size. Back in the seventies there was a full block of shops along Penny Lane, a green grocer, butchers, newsagents – that’s how life was in those days, it’s completely different now.”
At three different stages in his life Colin has even called the shop his home. He has also watched his three children grow up and each work in the shop during different times.
He said: “It’s changed so much since I took it over. When I first moved in my living room was behind the shop. I have lived there three times, first as a boy, then when I went to university and then when me and my wife Karen got married we lived there for a while.
“All my family have lived there at some point too. We’ve had a lot of memories in the shop, not only me but my children, they have all lived in it. My daughter when she was training to be a doctor, my son lived above the shop for a while, before he bought his first house.”
Colin Rimmer and his grandsons Samuel and Arthur
In 2008 he turned the shop into a full convenience store and in 2013, they introduced a craft beer range that brought people from across the North West to buy local, UK, and world beers. One brewery – Mad Hatter – even brewed a beer just for them called Penny Lane Pale.
For Colin, Penny Lane, the community surrounding it – and even those people who travelled far and wide just to visit the store – will always remain close to his heart and the memories created in the store will be cherished forever.
He said: “Penny lane is a neighbourhood, it’s packed with terraced houses where everyone knows everyone. The people there remember me as a little boy at the age of five and now I’m 66.
“There are people living there who are now 80-years-old and remember me being a boy, to the guy who owned the shop in 1990 and carried it on for 35 years. And the new people in the area remember me from recent years.
“It’s a community where people come, people go and come back. It’s a student area, we have solicitors, accountants living here, people from all walks of life.”
It’s been 58 years since the release of The Beatles song which catapulted Penny Lane to world fame and the street has remained Liverpool’s most famous street ever since. Colin added: “At the time my dad didn’t know Penny Lane would be the most famous street in Liverpool.”
It was an emotional day on Friday August 22 when Colin handed over the keys to the shop as he begins his well-earned retirement. He said it was “heart wrenching” to say goodbye to the last six decades of memories.
However, enjoying his morning coffee in the park this week he said he was “looking forward” to being away from the pressure of running a business and is excited to enjoy the coming years with his loved ones.
He added: “If there was a way of me keeping it and carrying on the tradition it would have been so nice. 66 years is such a long time to have memories in one place, so when I was finally leaving it, it was heart wrenching for both myself and my wife.
“We had people coming in to say goodbye all day, it was lovely. The shop has been in the family so long, it was a hard goodbye.”