How to Get Through The Tough Times The Old Style Way.

grandma247

Suzid I thought my lad had big feet at size 12.

"It isn't eating anything." I haven't heard that expression for long while!
I am planning to start buying stuff like towels, sheets etc soon for when dh retires as i doubt we will have enough spare money for such things.

Ceredwin I remember some of the three day week. I was in my first job in a mill office and because i was "staff" I had to go in even though the mill workers did not as it was too cold for them when the electric was off. We had a little sump heater in our office and I wore my coat most of the time. Dh (we were not married then) was an apprentice joiner and had to go with his boss to get a body ready for a funeral and when he got back to his bed sit the electric was off there so he ended up at ours that night. He was white as a sheet and refused to do the funeral side again.

grandma247

I got a call from the cable company today and they offered me a deal I could not refuse! Instead of £20 a month just for broadband they said I could keep the telephone,broadband and reduced tv package for £14.99 a month for the next 12 months. They are sending me a printed contract so I can read it for myself. It will be switched over at midnight tonight so I will get a refund on the overpay from this month.
It is well worth ringing in for a better deal.

Hardup_Hester

Na na na na na, I can retire at 61, lol, but I don't want to. This means that I can remember the 3 day week, I worked on a switchboard, I could answer the phones but not transfer them. Before that we'd had a dollseye switchboard & could transfer the calls by winding the handle on the side of the board, this had the added advantage of keeping us warm as the winding was good exercise.
Hester

ceridwen

charlies-aunt wrote: »

Sisters under the skin! very familiar for the expression "Won't eat owt" for stuff that you can get cheap and will eventually use. . . . . I have approx 30 rolls of BOGOF loo roll not eating owt at the back of the cupboard :rotfl:

Snap! I work on a Housing Association call centre - some of our tenants are outraged when we won't send an electrician to change a light bulb! Our customer service is good but not that good

Oopps . . . . showing my age . . . I remember the three day week, sugar/bread shortages,

Just thinking back to my childhood - grew up in a house with no central heating, rooms had a carpet in the middle and polished boards all round the edges, a bath once a week, bread and jam for at least one meal a day, hand-me-down clothes and shoes, walking two miles to school and back, parents both working two jobs to make ends meet and being left 'home alone' for hours on end . . . it sounds really deprived nowadays but it was pretty much the norm in our neck of the woods. Vividly remember the beautiful heavy swirls of ice on the inside of the bedroom windows during winter - couldn't see out for weeks on end at times :eek:

:rotfl:

Ditto to the:
- house with no central heating (and, later when there WAS some, I wasnt allowed to use it in my bedroom - even though I HAD to use my bedroom to have a hope of being able to concentrate on studying:mad:)
- left "home alone" - dont recall that till I was a teenager - but I was glad of the time on my own:)
- walking 2 miles to school (yep...and the same again to a part-time job in the evening afterwards). Well - the walk was healthy exercise and thought nothing of that anyway..
- bath once a week...corr...yes...until I absolutely insisted I HAD to be able to wash my hair more often than that - so at least got an extra hairwash "concession". I could just about put up with being dirty (that weekly bath:eek:) - but I couldnt tolerate having greasy hair - try as I might to adapt to that :eek:. Nothing and no-one will ever change me from my daily bath or shower - its a "no matter what - I'm going to have it" item now.

Ah - I DO have exactly one memory of the three day week then - re that bread strike. The wife of a man who was travelling to have a meeting with my boss rang to leave a message for him to buy a loaf of bread whilst in our area if he could because of it....My boss was surprised to find a loaf of bread sitting on his desk with an explanatory note saying "You owe me so much...."

My mother uses the expression "It doesnt owe me anything" about something she feels she has had fair amount of use from..

Anyways...I've got over 50 standard type lightbulbs stored that "don't owe me owt" - as I stocked-up with them prior to them being withdrawn from the shops. Being from a "business" type family - the temptation was there to buy loads more than I wanted and flog them off later - but my house is too small for that level of bulk-buying....darn it..

GreyQueen

Some of the stories on here are twin to my own life. We lived for most of my childhood (the bits I have memories of, anyway) in the same house. 3 bed Council terrace, heating was a fire in the living room, hot water was an electric immersion in the tank upstairs.

My job when I got in from school in the winter was to riddle out the ashes from the fire (it would have been allowed to go out the previous night), lay and start the fire. I also used to split the kindling in the back yard from short logs using a hedging hook. That was a medieval-looking handtool with a bluntish blade about 10 inches long. We got a gas fire when I was 11 and I genuinely missed the coal fire and especially the h.m toast. If you have never eaten toast made over a flame and dripping with butter.....you've never lived.

My Mum and Dad were factory workers during the 3 day week and enjoyed the time off, shame that the money was off, too. I can still recall being with Mum in one of the small supermarkets in our town and being stunned to see a woman with a trolley packed to overflowing with just bags of sugar.............

I can remember Mum saying that when we had coal she used to buy it summer as well as winter because if she left it until winter time there wouldn't be enough money in the budget to pay for it as we were using it. Guess some people with heating oil tanks might do the same thing these days? Although the regional newspaper in my area is detailing thefts of heating oil, sometimes in broad daylight, sometimes when the householders are asleep only a few metres away. You can get alarms for tanks which will ring off if the level suddenly drops btw.

I don't pay overmuch attention to the "news" as I live TV-free, just broadly keep up with Radio 4 and the newspapers. A lot of it is flim-flam as far as I'm concerned. I'm of the opinion that the things which really affect ordinary people's lives are probably in some little detail in the financial pages or not recorded at all. I don't feel as if I've been scared by media hype but I've always been a thoughtful type and tried to see the way the wind is blowing so I can trim my sails accordingly. A few times in this life I've been accused of being "lucky" when the speaker has seen me come out of a bad situation quite handily. It's not luck, most of the time, it's pre-planning and having a Plan B and Plan C. And sometimes even down to Plan D.:o

I studied economics at school and can remember being utterly sobered even at 13 by the understanding of how flimsy the world is, that Normal Life As We Know It is a house of cards, sleight of hand trick. Our currencies are fiat currencies with no backing and the whole thing only works because we accept the illusion. Makes you wonder if the Latter Day Saints (aka Mormons) are partially-correct with their attitudes about preserving food and their church's habit of buying up superior-quality farmland, even here in the UK. I'm not of that faith (or any faith) btw.

One things is for sure, if the brown matter hits the revolving cooling device, we will still need to eat and keep warm, so having considered ways of doing that if we get disconnected from the power grids or have to handle reduced incomes are reasonable precautions.

:question: In 2011, I shall be venturing into jam-making as a complete newbie and I guess there are plenty of old hands up here? Would greatly appreciate some pointers, if people would be so kind. Can you make jam with granulated suger (if so, I'm off to the shops), recommendations for sizes and types of jam pans, is a thermometer strictly necessary, can anyone recommend a good simple book to have by me? And anything else you can think of, please?

Book tip. I found this enchanting little book, a 2011 reprint of something published 74 years ago by an editor of American Vogue, only about 7 years after the Great Depression called "Orchids on Your Budget; live smartly on what you have." by Marjorie Hillis. Got it from the library. It's a fun, light-hearted read and the bits which aren't too dated are still useful. Her "orchids" are whatever grace notes help you to get thru straightened times. Mine would be CHOCOLATE. I thoroughly enjoyed it and wondered if some of you might like to check it out of your libraries...........

ceridwen

floss2 wrote: »

We are probably to be considered quite well-off by some people's standards, but we have our worries about bills etc....we recently shelved plans for moving as my (local government) job is not secure at the moment and interest rates are almost certain to go up soon and to double / treble our mortgage might be fine at 1.25% above the current base rate, but not at a new mortgage rate of 4-5%.

I really don't remember what interest rates I paid when I had a mortgage - I just recall that they were either "normal" level or "sky high" level. One thing I DO recall though was that the easy basic way to remember how much I would have to pay on a mortgage (of the standard repayment type) is that "standard" level interest rates mean each £1,000 borrowed costs £8 per month. For instance - £100,000 borrowed would mean:

£8 x 100 = £800 per month payment

Anything less than £8 per £1,000 per month is a "low" interest rate and only temporary - to be treated as an unexpected bonus whilst it lasts.

I guess both the last generation and the one after us have their own particular pitfall to look out for.

With my generation - a lot of us bought our houses with an endowment mortgage and got caught out by finding that a LOT of them were mis-sold and there wasnt enough money at the end of the term to even pay back the mortgage (never mind provide the promised lump sum to do with what one pleases). I've heaved many sighs of relief that I knew the DHSS (now DWP) policy for benefit claimants was that they wouldnt pay the endowment part of a mortgage if someone became unemployed - so I deliberately made sure mine was a repayment mortgage (in case I became unemployed ever again...).

For the next generation of housebuyers - I fear many think the current low interest rates are the "norm" - rather than that temporary bonus that they actually are...and maybe havent planned their finances to allow for when mortgage interest rates go back up again to "normal" levels at some point.

ceridwen

GreyQueen

- I've read the other book by that author.

Anyways - by a circuitous route on from there....I found a blog that some Old Stylers will like:

http://thedepressionkitchen.blogspot.com/

maryb

GreyQueen
I've got an original copy of that book complete with my mother's doodlings!!

The best jam book I have found is one of the little "Right Way" paperbacks that you find on the very bottom shelf of the cookery book section in Smith's. It's called (guess what?) The Right Way to Make Jams. Absolutely foolproof. And cheap

I have always made jam with granulated as opposed to jam sugar but I do make sure it is cane sugar ie Tate & Lyle. I just find that it seems to work better than sugar from sugar beet which sometimes seems reluctant to set. I don't know why that should be and I have never seen anything published about it. But there are some offers on at the moment - last week I got 3 for 2 bags of Tate & Lyle in Wilkos

[Deleted User]

I am so genuinely happy to see the thread back on track, I just needed time out while it all settled. I have only briefly skim read but want to give katolicos hugs, your dad will be very proud of you, he brought you up well

I decided that you sometimes have to spend money to save money and I am going back to a hobby that I used to have 25 years ago ie wine making. Hey we are surrounded by elderberries and damsons and some of my very best wine was elderberry. I am starting slowly though and not plunging into the starting from scratch way, with my head in a bucket. There are some good forums for wine making and I have ordered a book by cj berry from amazon for when I get into the ferment in a bucket way.

I have spent less than £100 and I reckon I have enough kit to fill 4 pet demijohns, including a red wine kit. I have all the bits in there including corks siphon and a corker, all I`ll need is bottles and I`ll just scrounge them. Google wow wine and you`ll find a brilliant recipe using a litre of orange juice and a litre of grape juice. Its actually very uplifting to get a new hobby that is also productive

mardatha

Anybody having an oil tank in the garden is best to have the tank buried in the ground, only leave the top showing. You can sit planters etc on it to disguise the filler bit.