Hello Dear Reader,
I grew up in a house with heating in one room, with that fact and the recent ‘surveys’ in the cost of raising a child, it’s a total surprise to many that I’m actually alive!
Our living room had a parkray coal fire which heated the water and that room. No other room had any heating at all. The coal fire also heated the hot water but it would take it being ‘opened up’ and set roaring to heat a bath and we just couldn’t afford the coal. We had a parrafin heater in our bathroom which was lit on Sunday afternoons when we had our weekly bath. The rest of the week, the bathroom was unheated and we had a ‘strip wash’, which I always successfully managed to have under my dressing gown! Half way through the week, I would wash my hair in the kitchen sink and it was usually damp the next morning. I never owned a hair dryer until I was grown up and with a job.
There were no supermarkets. Food was grown in our garden. Luckily, we had the usual size big council house garden that had plenty of space. Our back porch was full of ‘clamps’ where the root vegetables were buried in sand and peat to keep them throughout the winter. Apples were wrapped in newspaper and placed on planking shelves in the roof rafters of the garage. Our greatest luxury, was a deep freeze…………with a lock! Through out the summer, my parents and us kids, would pick barrow after barrow of broad beans, French beans, runner beans and peas and prepare them, blanch them and then freezer them in bags to keep us going throughout the winter. Apples were stewed and bagged and again stored in the freezer to last the winter. In the warmer months, my dad would fish off Par docks and Spit beach to catch whiting and mackerel. The mackerel was ‘soused’ or hot pickled and sealed in kilner jars and the whiting was gutted, filleted and frozen. He would go out of his friend’s boat and bring back pollock which would be gutted, steamed and mixed with mashed potatoes and there would be bags and bags of fish cakes in the freezer. Meat came from ‘Dave’s Discount’ freezer store and mum would buy a forequarter of beef (shin and mostly stewing meat) that was stewed and served with gravy. It was bagged up at home and stored in the freezer. The big roast dinner was reserved for Christmas.
We kept chickens and not just for eggs. We also had ducks. A good third of our garden was a muddy poopy mess! We had piles of birdy poop and bedding which we kept to dig into our garden. We would be sent with a barrow and fork to the nearby stables to ask for manure which we would bring home. As a child, I spent a lot of time either collecting shit or digging it into the garden. I quite enjoyed digging!
We had a green house and throughout the summer ate grapes and melons to the point that I was sick of them. We had lots of fruit bushes in a fruit cage and made jam to keep us going all year. School lunch was always a jam sandwich and yes, the bread was home made. In winter, there was cabbage, kale, purple sprouting broccoli and sprouts. Dinner was always ‘shut up and eat it’ and as we were always hungry, we always ate it.
School uniform came as balls of knitting wool from the local haberdashery and my mum would knit us all one school jumper each every year. When we out grew it, she would detach the jumper and start to unpick it and pick up the stitches and then just knit the body and sleeves longer. When our school skirts got too short, she would let them down. When our school shirts got tatty, she would turn the collars and patch where no one could see. We each had one set of uniform, the jumper and skirt got worn all week and the shirts and underwear washed by hand each night and dried by the fire. We had no washing machine and sheets were washed in the bath by sitting on the side and stamping on them. Mum and I would take them in the garden and hold an end and twist them into a sausage to wring them out. They would then be hoisted onto a high ling and held aloft with a pole to stop the line drooping in the middle.
Winters were harsh and everyone I knew had chilblains. You got them on your feet and hands. Everyone’s noses dripped, mouth cracked with cold sores and wore unwashed clothes, as no day was ever a drying day for weeks and weeks on end. Coats and shoes never really dried and the house would be damp and dark from October to March. We had ice on the inside of our windows and our pipes would often freeze, which meant no water until they defrosted. We took a hot water bottle to bed. When it got so cold that the blankets didn’t keep you warm any anything became a bed covering. Coats, dad’s donkey jacket, and old curtains. Still, I can remember sardines on toast and sitting around the fire on those cold evenings and all of us spending time together in one room.
All entertainment began and ended in the local village. Everything happened in the church hall. Brownies, Scouts, Guides, youth club on a Friday and Sunday school on Sunday. We flocked to Sunday school to collect our ‘I’ve been’ stamps in our books as it meant we got a Christmas present and a holiday to Porthpean for a week in the summer. No one at that summer bible camp had any pocket money, we ate what we were given and every year knew we would get an ice cream on the last day. We looked forwards to Christmas bazaars, summer fetes and sunday school ‘teas’.
Shoes were something that you got new in September for school. They were purposefully too big and everyone wore two or more pairs of socks. We clunk clunked our way to school in loose schools, with rolled up jumper sleeves and trousers turned up to almost the knee. They had no toes in them by June and by July we had to explain to our teachers why we were wearing our black plimsols for just a few weeks. Clothes came from jumble sales, hand me downs from friends and relatives. Schools knew and accepted that they were full of ordinary kids and consequently, I can’t remember a single school trip, day out or special occasion. We just went to school and learnt and that was it.
My dad was a lorry driver but that wasn’t well paid. My mum stayed home until we were older and I was at secondary school. I was expected to have the fire going and the dinner made for mum when she got home. I loved reading and drawing and would while away hours doing just that. There was no child care. I got a bus home from school and my sister and brother walked back from the primary school and I met them at the end of the lane and I took them home. There were no snacks, no multiple TV channels to watch and we all loved our own ‘tranny’ radio. If you were hungry, you made do with a jam sandwich as you did for breakfast and lunch.
Employment law was mercifully slack throughout my childhood. I and so many like me, picked the winter daffodils in bud and then the spring early Cornish potatoes. We got work in pubs washing glasses and chippys peeling spuds. I had friends who swept up and made tea in hair dressers and even crimped pasties in the back of bakeries. I sold ice creams in a van on the beach every summer from when I was thirteen years old, I was supposed to be fourteen but I lied. I used to save up and buy Mum roll-ons, Rimmel make up, Silvikrin shampoo and Yardley perfume. One summer, I was so determined to buy a pair of Wrangler jeans that I saved all summer. By the time of was sixteen, I was financially self sufficient and by eighteen was living independently. I’d never heard of a university until VIth form and didn’t stay long enough to go to one.
Everyone I knew lived a similar life to my own. In fact, I was much better off than many of my contemporaries. My mum knew who the hungry kids were and told me to bring them home. I was taller than most kids and my mum knew who was short of a cardi or a nightie and they could have my old ones. We always ate a hot meal every night, there was always a pot of tea and I was always able to bring school friends home and they always got fed too. Locally, we were strangely aware of the parents who smoked or drank their money and it wasn’t unheard of for my primary school head teacher to go personally to the house and give them a shot across the bough if they neglected their children.
As a family, things got better for us when both my parents had a job and we’d often have a coal fire in two rooms and later we had electric heaters in our bedrooms and we were allowed to switch then on just before going to bed. By the time I left home, there were three TV channels but still no washing machine but at least mum could afford to take the big wash to the launderette.
It takes what ever you have to raise a child. I didn’t have a holiday until my youngest child was thirteen and my eldest, now 27 has never had a holiday in his life. They didn’t get much at all, but in comparison to my childhood, grew up in decadence. They could have a bath every day, clean clothes every day, and we had a heated house with double glazing. They had breakfast cereal, juice and a packed lunch and a cooked meal every night. They had a birthday and Christmas present. They went of school trips and even school holidays. We had days out to the beach and parks. They had an ice cream every week!
It certainly doesn’t take that much to raise a child and those of us who didn’t plan them but had them anyway, know that you get by some how and do your best. Those of us who grew up, by modern standards, in poverty, were never aware that we were poor. Children need to be loved and wanted, have secure families, a roof over their heads, enough food, enough cleanliness and enough clothes. There is little more that they need. I was loved and wanted and so were my children and that is about all they or I truly needed.
The photo is of me and my lovely mum - a couple of summers ago. I am truly blessed, that despite of having no money, gave me a wonderful upbringing.
Over to you. Who else brought their kids up on not a lot more that good luck and prayer? Who else thinks that materialism has polluted family life and blurs the line between what we want and what we need?
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Does it cost £148,000 to raise a child?
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