How much did 2 OXO's cost in 1936?

MrT_5

KMK wrote:

I also remember a notice you often saw in corner shops

"Please do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends". What a succint use of language and reasonably pleasant in tone too! We had a Co-op number and woe betide if you forgot to give it when you did the errands at the "store" as it was called in our town.

54501 Never forget the Co-Op number nor my army number but can't remember some pin and phone numbers. Anyone cracked this oxo question yet?

The modern equivalent to your notice is "Please do not ask for credit as a punch in the mouth often offends". No class these days is there? :rotfl:

RichyRich

I've never understood why one would receive a punch in the face merely for asking for credit.

If it was for non-repayment I could understand

Rich

[Deleted User]

We had a little corner shop where I think it was a halfpenny each for an Oxo cube this was around 1947-8. Mum also could buy a penny packet of Nescafe coffee in a sachet which she took home and mixed with two cups of milk in a saucepan and we would have a cup of coffee.She adored coffee but couldn't afford it. I always promised her that when I grew up I would buy her a 'proper coffee perculator and some 'real coffee' Sadly she died before I could do that. You could also buy 5 Weights cigarettes for 7pence farthing in a paper envelope. I was always sent in the shop on Tuesdays, family allowance day (8/- a week then, 40p now ) to buy them as she was too ashamed to admit to being too broke to buy a full packet. My Dad always bought her 20 Weights on a Thursday night and that was all she had until Tuesday.
Ah the wonderful Co-op. In south London we had the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society and if my Mum bought anything there she was given little tin coins in exchange and every so often she would bag them all up and pay them in for her 'Divi' As a little girl I can remember playing shops with this 'tin money' but woe betide me if I lost any
School uniform was bought in the Co-op as you got your 'divi'.Our local Co-op was huge on four floors and had one of those whizzy things that the assistant put the cash into and it was whisked away to the office and then about a few minutes later the change would come whizzing back in a little container. No self service in those days and there was a chair for the customer (my mum) to sit in whilst I was rigged out for school once a year.

MrT_5

I could go on and on about the old days but as this is not the correct place I won't. Anyone know of a website/forum that does that kind of thing? Nostalgia ain't what it used to be! Cue Dvorjak or however you spell his name? Think Hovis advert.

djohn2002uk

JackieO wrote:

Ah the wonderful Co-op. In south London we had the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society and if my Mum bought anything there she was given little tin coins in exchange and every so often she would bag them all up and pay them in for her 'Divi' As a little girl I can remember playing shops with this 'tin money' but woe betide me if I lost any

The "little tin coins" were actually Co-op tokens which were not used to collect and save to get your "Divi" but were purchased to use as a form of currency for the Co-op milk man and maybe the Co-op baker too.
You put out your empties and the correct amount of tokens and the milkman left the appropriate number of bottles.
If I remember correctly, when you spent money at the Co-op they gave you long narrow receipts which you kept to claim your Divi. They were the width of the large ledger that they kept on the counter and about 1/2" high. The pages in the ledger had perforations across the page every 1/2" and carbon paper was put in between the pages.

Mr_Proctalgia

I was born into a corner shop in the fifties! So not as wise and venerable as you lot. I can definitely remember the end of rationing though. Remember sugar in Blue Bags, loose butter in grease proof paper, lard ditto, Biscuits in glass topped tins, bananas in wooden coffins, loose Oxo's in big tins (cannot remember the price though - Sorry) a strange pot thingie that kept the ham in place when carving. Flying saucers, shrimps, black jacks and licorice root. Rock salt, a big red Berkel slicer with a wheel on front. Single Gillette razor blades that went rusty in a blink, crisps with a proper salt twist of paper, and a huge till that made a ker-ching noise when you had to press the correct mix of huge keys ( No racism intended but my dad called it the "Jewish Piano")
The good old days Eh? - We had to share a loo at the end of the yard, tin baths, no heating, no hot water, no bloody money either.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

a strange pot thingie that kept the ham in place when carving

Still being used in delicatessans and some butchers !

Ted_Bloke

MrT wrote:

I could go on and on about the old days but as this is not the correct place I won't. Anyone know of a website/forum that does that kind of thing? Nostalgia ain't what it used to be! Cue Dvorjak or however you spell his name? Think Hovis advert.

You spell it Dvoràk, as for how you really pronounce it, a Czech told me it is impossible to do it right if you are not Czech.

Ted_Bloke

Nobody's got it yet, I guessed 1/2 d aka ha'penny mnyah mnyah, and someone else said that for 1947. The reason I guess 1/2 d rather than 1/4 d aka 'a farthing' is that they got through a war without the galloping inflation that took place a few decades later so something could well have had a stable price (and weight), and because I think the farthing (which survived till, when? the fifties at least) was already rather an archaic thing even in 1937 - that nothing could be bought for a farthing but a few sensitive items were priced with farthings e.g. a bottle of milk or loaf of bread might be 1 1/4 d - 'a penny-farthing' like the bike which was definitely a museum peice long before then.

I remember mnyah mnyah I won't say when, but farthings were still used for milk, bread and little else, we used to make a weekly collection for charity at school, so one week, I organised the collection of about five shillings in farthings which is quite a lot of farthings, quite a weight of coins (1s = 12d = 48 farthings). Innocent times, we did that 'just to see the teachers face' - instead of bashing it in as one would do nowadays .

margaretclare

The Hovis ad - little lad pushing his bike up a hill in sepia tones - uses part of the symphony 'From the New World' by the Czech composer already mentioned. The tune that sounds so nostalgic is actually a Negro spiritual (again no racism intended) and there are words to it.

'Going home, going home
I'm a-going home
Quiet-like, some still day
I'm a-going home'.

It was played at my late husband's funeral in 1992, as the coffin was being carried out of church.

Re stability of the currency, it was Hayek, the economist, who got on a bus in London and used a penny with Victoria's head. He was impressed with an economy that was 'so stable, the currency hadn't lost its value whereas that of other countries had'. Alas, that was before galloping inflation of the 1970s.

Margaret Clare