Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

PS Dog-Dog is a SHE!

All dogs are he in my simple world

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

You've all just confirmed I'm the only real poor person here

My father was educated privately, but the family lost its wealth in the war - so he's from middle-stock... and met my mum, whose family is definitely poor-stock.

Neither of my parents or grand parents went to university and none would have looked at a private school. Poor immigrant stock who came here in the late 19th century all of them.

You need a certain level of income to socialise, especially when you're on a single income.... so I never socialised as I didn't like the people I could afford to socialise with.

Being online's brilliant, because you get to talk to people about stuff you're interested in - and not sit around somebody's scruffy house while they roll rollies and talk about their signing on date before toting on a spliff. Been there, done that, it's dull - although it did get me out of the house

I'm sure there are free/ cheap activities if you look hard enough. Rambling, walking, visiting interesting places, window shopping, evening classes....volunteering? there must be community groups that can put you in touch with people that need help.

It doesn't matter which way you cut it, one single income can't compete with the lifestyle of a couple on minimum wage.

But you do have the financial advantage of living with your parents and have no children to support. If you knock out our mortgage and home maintenance and utilities and council tax and then discount all the buying for our kids, you possibly have as much disposable income as most nice people.

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

I'm sure there are free/ cheap activities if you look hard enough. Rambling, walking, visiting interesting places, window shopping, evening classes....volunteering? there must be community groups that can put you in touch with people that need help.

Not really. Rambling/walking isn't free when you need to buy good waterproof clothes, a coat and some proper walking shoes. Even joining the Ramblers is expensive - and walking alone is cold, dull and isolating if you're already doing it as you've no money. Walking's great fun if you've got the right clothes, have somebody with you - are returning to a warm/heated house and/or stopping for a pub meal and a chat after.

Visiting interesting places... could be miles away, cost of fuel/parking. There's no window shopping in tiny places, so that again involves the cost of fuel/parking - only to walk round shops looking at stuff you can't afford, surrounded by people with their friends who can afford it.

Evening classes - these are very limited outside of big cities. And they're very pricey too. The current one I go to is a 40 mile round trip, plus there's a materials cost of about £15/week. And the others are there to do their thing, then they rush off to their friends/home/family, nobody makes friends at evening classes really. Everybody's got their own lives.

Volunteering - again, limited. I did look at one, but it would have meant a 40 mile round trip to volunteer. And community groups, same again.

Outside of big cities, things are different/not available.

So the only really free thing is watching TV

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

But you do have the financial advantage of living with your parents and have no children to support. If you knock out our mortgage and home maintenance and utilities and council tax and then discount all the buying for our kids, you possibly have as much disposable income as most nice people.

I am not really talking about "now", but the past 30 years.

I probably have about £500/month disposable income nowadays, whereas before I'd have £50-100 tops.

Masomnia

My income's about that, to be fair!

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

You've all just confirmed I'm the only real poor person here

My father was educated privately, but the family lost its wealth in the war - so he's from middle-stock... and met my mum, whose family is definitely poor-stock. So he set the standards of speaking/thinking in our family. But we had no money, all second hand clothes, no holidays abroad, no heating in the house... and went to school just so we could "leave school and get a job". This usually meant in the small local factory, or in an office/shop.

As I've stayed single, with my unknown speshulness, this has limited my ability to mix with people of my IQ level... my income meant I had to mix with pretty dire types or nobody. So I mostly chose nobody. You need a certain level of income to socialise, especially when you're on a single income.... so I never socialised as I didn't like the people I could afford to socialise with.

Being online's brilliant, because you get to talk to people about stuff you're interested in - and not sit around somebody's scruffy house while they roll rollies and talk about their signing on date before toting on a spliff. Been there, done that, it's dull - although it did get me out of the house

It doesn't matter which way you cut it, one single income can't compete with the lifestyle of a couple on minimum wage.

My mum was born in a council house and my dad in an unmarried mothers home (not that my grandmother was unmarried, it was the closest place available when she went into labour).

Mum left school with no qualifications, dad left with a few (no idea what though!) although his parents owned their own home.

Dad worked very hard in construction which enabled my parents to buy their house, it was only supposed to be a temporary measure as the contract was for 3 or 4 years and in a climbing housing market, the sums added up to making a bit of a profit on the house sale once the contract was completed. Unfortunately, dad then fell off the bridge he was making and it plunged our family into poverty for a while.

Our clothes were all jumble sale or home made, our bread home baked, there was no holidays, no car, no nice new gadgets for the house and food was eeked out...the idea of going to a jumble sale now fills me with horror, the thought of it sends me into a panic attack, as does any really busy places with jostling people, it takes me right back to being 3 or 4 years old and being barged about by old ladies with cheap perfume.

My parents (well really my dad), taught me that the only limitations a person has is the limitations they put on themselves, that we are all equal and rather than making fun out of or pitying a person less fortunate than yourself, or being jealous because someone has more money than you, that you treat them as your equal...being poorer does not make them lesser people just like being richer does not make them better people but to always strive to better yourself.

And that was what he did, most would have given up on being told you are disabled for life, to go from a very physical job to being a desk jockey but he didn't, he just very quietly started from the bottom as an office junior (at the age of nearly 30) and worked his way up to senior management and in the process, our home life improved...but we still didn't have holidays abroad (we still don't, even though parents can afford it), we prefer to stay in this country for our main holidays.

I have always mixed in a very wide social cicle, from the have nots to the haves....it doesn't bother me one jot to be honest as long as I can hold a semi decent and intelligent conversation with them.

John_Pierpoint

PasturesNew wrote: »

My father was educated privately, but the family lost its wealth in the war - so he's from middle-stock... and met my mum, whose family is definitely poor-stock. So he set the standards of speaking/thinking in our family. But we had no money, all second hand clothes, no holidays abroad, no heating in the house... and went to school just so we could "leave school and get a job". This usually meant in the small local factory, or in an office/shop.

Wars certainly stir up society.

How come your family had "a bad war" ? - for working families like your mum's, a lot got a chance to get a real money paying job for the first time (not to mention the rural folk who made a bob or two from townies on a miserable ration and the warning to "dig for victory" as the country's food stocks were measured in weeks.)

My father came from a family, that spent the inter war years trying to keep up appearances as they spend great granddad's money.
[GGD had been forced to migrate to London, but appears to have "done all right", by being forced into self employment in his 20's]

My mum was the ambitious (?) middle daughter of the suburban village copper.

Dad had all the signs of being the "clogs to clogs" in three generations, unable to settle to anything in the 1930's.

He probably dreamt of being the sort of adventurer, who 60 years earlier would have built the Empire.

Then along came the most exciting time of the 20th century - another chance of going and shooting Germans.

I think that was a real "gap year" (or 2) and an introduction to other peoples reality. A really "maturing" experience.

Meanwhile nun was commuting up to Town and being pretty well paid for working for a firm involved in "The War Effort". In the evening she volunteered to work at the canteen of a local army camp (That way you got one square meal a day - and perhaps when the Yanks arrived you got to meet the: "over sexed, over paid and over here".)


Dad, after ignominiously coming back with the expeditionary force, spent 6 months building pill boxes before going for a Mediterranean holiday in Egypt. Unfortunately he was picked up by a bunch of Italians and was forced to spend the next three Xmases pretending that the Christmas cake on display was not made of plaster of Paris.

With a lot of time on his hands he buckled down and studied to be an accountant - doing the exams by post.

Come the end of the war, and a marriage, there was a youngish DINKY couple with a chance to make their way in the wreckage of socialist Britain.
But this society did have a forward looking "the only way is up" attitude, coupled with the "Land fit for Heroes" planning.
[The Germans even more so in a land where the cigarette had replace the Reich Mark as currency].

There is a new book out - must get the library to order a copy

http://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/news-and-events/general-news/868-the-barbed-wire-university-the-untold-story-of-allied-pow-camps&Itemid=7

John.

PS Talking of libraries, "vivatifosi" have you spotted the Sunday Times news story that the BBC is proposing to pack up filming the Grand Prix racing?!?

This will have to do. I'm not paying to get through the Murdoch money wall.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005473/BBC-chiefs-set-axe-motor-racing-save-digital-channels.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

PasturesNew

Only earnt £6 today so far... if I were in a grotty 1-bed flat I'd need a minimum of £23/day just to cover the rent and basic bills. I do hope things pick up. And June was going along so nicely until Friday's stats rolled in.....

John_Pierpoint

Have the "old folks" got to the stage where they would qualify for an attendance allowance?

Or have I misunderstood your current housing arrangements?

[My late uncle was given the higher level (24hr) allowance when he had not even asked for it - he had rigged up all sorts of ideas to enable himself to function in his house alone after his wife died - including something called "A bath knight"

http://www.bath-knight.co.uk/products/bath_knight/deluxe/deluxe.html?gclid=COP07NyQwqkCFQEd4QodQx0AEQ

lostinrates

dog - dog is her on line name, and she doesn't mind being called a he. Just so long as it comes with attention. She's spent today in the car wih us while we did some fencing and thought that was grand. she's being incredibly stoic and wonderful. Last night dh carried her upstairs, next week I'll sleep downstairs with her.

Beautiful day again, at last. and not too hot.:)