Share your stories of desparation!

rog2

When we were young, you could travel on the buses for free until you were three years old.
My sister's most spoken words, until the age of six, were: "I'll be three in June".

lynzpower

I've also gone 3 days living on monster munch and pasta with nothing on it before. Oh and making roll ups out of the leftover baccy in the fag ends in the ashtray!

Yep done that too

Also I remembered last night, that I went halfers with my next door neighbour on a netto margarine once as well, as neither of us could afford one each, that must have been all of 20p at the time

QueenB.

Has anyone noticed how some of these little things we are still doing but now we consider it good DFW/MSE/OS sense:D

TallGirl

What a lovely thread, makes you very humble reading it but it is also a laugh.

My story is from when I was at Uni in 1990. I had a old banger of a bicycle as it was not worth it bringing my nice bike up to Copenhagen where I studied. Bikes would get nicked very easily. I thought wouldn’t it be nice to bring my nice bike over to England where I used to spend my holidays. Off it went on the plane but when I got back I was really broke so to my shame I claimed on my insurance that it had been stolen. That is not the worst thing I had to give a crime reference number so had to call the police first and pretend to report a crime.

I am so ashamed now and I still have the blasted bike but never use it but feel too bad to throw it on the skip.

Reading other people stories I didn’t really need that money that badly but at least I came out of Uni without any student debt.

I think this type of stories should make it to Martin’s new book really humbling.

winkle1

god, some people have had some really hard times. i consider myself so lucky in comparison.

i'm sure if my mum posted on here she would have some stories to tell.

mums are the best - the sacrifices they make to feed their kids.

some of these have really brought a lump to my throat.

needmoney

netally wrote:

This thread makes me feel a little relieved! My OH has knicked a few loo rolls from work when we've been desperate. Although one weekend he forgot and we had to use newspaper! (Use it sparingly, I managed to clog the loo!)

quote]

lol how come this never happened years ago when practically everyone in my street used it. Our posh times wre when we used the tissue wrap from those great big jaffas that used to be around at Chritmas times.:o

MoaningMyrtle

winkle1 wrote:

god, some people have had some really hard times. i consider myself so lucky in comparison.

i'm sure if my mum posted on here she would have some stories to tell.

mums are the best - the sacrifices they make to feed their kids.

some of these have really brought a lump to my throat.

I'll add a few more, although these were from my own childhood:

I know that on her 21st birthday my Mum, who had a an 8 month old and was 5 months pregnant with me, only had one egg in her cupboard, she scrambled it and shared it with my sister for her birthday dinner . (She was married, my Father was away in the Forces)

We had no fridge until I was about 9, this was in the late 1970's.

We were lucky enough to get a telephone when I was about 10, I had a couple of friends who phoned me, it was then cut off as Mum couldn't pay the bill and I had to lie to my friends and their Mum's and say it was out of order. One mother kept on saying, 'it must be mended by now'.

We always had ice in the inside of our windows, we only had the open fire for heating in the living room. Thanks goodness for hot water bottles.

We used to regularly look for coppers down the back of the sofa, pockets etc.

We literally lived hand to mouth in those days, but we didn't know any differently. For example for our tea (Luckily we had free school dinners) we used to have a different tin of something every day, Monday - Noodle Doodles, Tuesday- Toast Toppers, Wednesday - Ravioli, Thursday - Beans and sausages etc, this was one standard tin between five children on one slice of toast each. If we were really lucky we would occasionally have one packet of Angel Delight between five children.

I can vividly remember the excitement of the Ice Cream Van driving down the road, seeing the other children rushing to get their ice-cream, my sister and I would swing on the garden gate watching, knowing we were not able to get one.

I'll do a more upbeat post later, what doesn't break us makes us stronger eh?

tinkerbelluk

I remember when DH and I bought out first house, we had just moved out from our parents and forgot you needed money to live and mummy & daddy weren't paying for everything!

The house had had building work done before we moved in and we were left with a solid concrete floor in the living room, one piece of carpet about 8 x 8 and an old sofa that had been left. We had no money for any furnishings so we pined a sheet up for curtains, used a duvet cover as a throw for the sofa and our "dining table!" was 3 packing boxes taped together and we used to sit on the floor Japanese style eating anything that could be made in a micro as we had no cooker for over a month!

The day we eventually had saved enough and had some furniture and carpet laid DH and I were so excited we spent the rest of the day lying on the carpet making angels with the fluff!

Snaggles

tinkerbelluk wrote:

The day we eventually had saved enough and had some furniture and carpet laid DH and I were so excited we spent the rest of the day lying on the carpet making angels with the fluff!

Possibly the cutest thing I've ever heard! :A

baglady

I remember I had no money to get the bus to work in Central London from near Croydon. I had no choice but to walk- it took me 3 hours each way. A friend gave me money to get her some products at work using my discount. I was momentarily tempted to steal them from the stock room and pocket the money. But as broke as I was - I couldn't steal.