Associated-Rediffusion advertises on the back of the cloth-bound, hardback yearbook.  In embossed gold lettering they invite you ever so politely to remember that London has no early closing day, and that an advert on AR always has a shopping day the day after - what you need if you want Mrs Britain to still remember your new product when she gets the day's shopping tomorrow.

For 1957 is a different world.  Whilst there are proto-supermarkets (Tesco, Home & Colonial, Sainsbury), they are small affairs and often still have an assistant who will fetch your chosen products from behind a counter.  With no deep freeze - and often no refrigerator - Mrs Britain must buy food daily as it will not keep.  And she shops in a completely different way to now.

There's no getting in the car to pop to the shops.  Mrs Britain walks to her nearest shops, or gets an omnibus or train to a larger metropolis.  She buys meat from the butcher, tea from the grocer, oranges from the greengrocer, Milk of Magnesia from the chemist - each one a separate shop, all but the chemist definitely locally owned.  Mrs Britain probably knows each shopkeeper by name, and they her - especially if they were named on her ration book only a few years before.

But new affluence is around the corner.  The supermarkets - in the high street, not yet out of town - are coming.  The car is getting more popular and more affordable.  Mrs Britain has had her horizons widened by her experiences during the war.  This idyllic suburban scene will not last - not least because Mrs Britain does not want it to.