Preparedness for when

craigywv

HAHAHA GQ, was it just me or did anyone elses nightie give off big cracks of sometimes noticeable electricity when removed from ones body in the morning. I remember one instance it really gave a crack and hurt my torso.

mardatha

I hated the 70s and 80s but loved the 60s. I got married in 66 and we had only a coffee table and an ancient tv that broke after a week, rest was landlords idea of a "furnished" flat. I feel sorry for the young ones now, and they feel sorry for me. But the diff between us is that I know I can survive on nothing, and they can't.

thriftwizard

Another one here with fond & not-so-fond memories of the 70s... my Dad dropped off his twig at the grand old age of 52 in 1970, leaving my mother with the grand sum of £27 in the bank and myself & my younger brother aged 11 & 7. (My two older brothers, 19 & 22, had left home by then & were self-supporting.) We were given six weeks to get out of our tied accommodation, which was considered generous, but poor Mum hadn't worked for pay for 20+ years and was really thrown in at the deep end. She coped magnificently, but can't bear to remember those days; the anxiety & uncertainty, on top of grief & shock, must have been horrendous, but she got us through somehow, and we survived the power cuts, the rubbish piling up outside the house, the cut-down & carved-up jumble-sale clothes, not being afford to go on school trips or have shoes that fitted properly etc. with style & panache, because we knew we were still better off than lots of other people. Mind you, her attempts at knitting have left deep scars, though she has just about got the hang of sleeves now.

Yet we did have a lot of fun, in the mid-to-late 70s, in an innocent & impecunious sort of way; I remember parties on the beach or by the river, with guitars & harmonicas & camp-fires, with home-brewed cider & beer & exotic "foreign" food like crudit!s & dips. And you could stay out all night without anyone worrying much; we all had sleeping bags there'd have been absolutely no possibility of misbehaving in - you had to stay utterly still all night or they'd wrap themselves round your neck. We made stuff all the time - crochet, macrame, enamel "jewellery", weaving, rugs - often together, around the kitchen table, drinking "real" tea, black with no sugar - it amuses me that DS1 has just "discovered" tea in a big way. A bike or the bus was how most of us got around, most of the time; my first real boyfriend was able to borrow his father's car, which made him soooo posh I was gobsmacked when he asked me out!

We were far from rich, but we knew we weren't poor either, although probably in a strictly financial way, we were! But we had a roof over our heads, even if it wasn't always warm, and food to eat, whether we actually liked it or not, and clothes to wear that were always clean & pressed. We even had a foreign holiday once, even if it was on the train rather than by flying. I think she did a grand job, and I also think I should let her know that, whilst I still can.

On a lighter note - a link for you, GQ, found whilst rootling round in the PM archives. Took me a few minutes to clock the date...

Frugalsod

I think that the definition of what counts as not being in poverty has changed drastically. When I was young landlines were becoming common but we did not get a colour TV for a number of years after they came out. I did not get a mobile until the market was saturated and some people even had more than two. For me it was not really essential.

Nowadays nearly everyone has a phone and almost all homes have a microwave, TV and a fridge so are now regarded as essential yet occasionally you hear people saying that they are not poor if they have these. Yet there are many who do not have enough money to replace these if they were to lose one.

It is amazing that people will spout such garbage about someone on the dole having a bigger TV than they do and they earn a lot more than anyone who lives on benefits. People make different decisions and if you are at home all day out of work or even disabled a decent TV makes a lot of sense.

I have never owned a car I used to cycle everywhere and now can get most things online and if I ever needed a car I could rent one for the day. Yet I am also not required to sacrifice several thousand pounds a year on insurance, depreciation, fuel or car taxes like many do.

jk0

The fourth type that likes to invade my home, (apart from spiders, slugs & silverfish) is earwigs. They are cleverer than the other ones though. They use a wooden horse in the shape of my milk cool bag.

I have a cool bag for my milk which I leave ice packs in the night before the milk arrives.

https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?section=10202&item=1742232&backLink=ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp%3fsection=10202&beginIndex=0&JServSessionIdrootauohsdcgr05=dmqfznmqo1.mljJo7bymQrMa3iIpR9vmQLzpRjOqQXPqAbDpAqImQXHcBSUax0Kaxu-&pdcgri=zgsej9ky74MIYVZjHVmYSweT:S&pdcgri_pses=pdcgri%253Dzgsej9ky74MIYVZjHVmYSweT%25253AS~#

At least half of the time, I find earwigs asleep inside it the following morning, and dustings of earwig poo on the ice packs.

The cleverest earwigs hide in the seams, then crawl out in my kitchen while I'm at work.

Little b*ggars.

Baileys_Babe

GreyQueen wrote: »

then we got a crate called an Austin 1100.

That was my Mum's very first car. Before that it belonged to her father and before that my Mum's best friend and before that many other people. It was an orange/dust colour.

GreyQueen

Baileys_Babe wrote: »

That was my Mum's very first car. Before that it belonged to her father and before that my Mum's best friend and before that many other people. It was an orange/dust colour.

Ours was teal blue. I don't know how many people had owned it before us but it wasn't a family hand-me-down. It still seemed incredible to be a car-owning family at long last.

Frugalsod, good on ya for not owning a car. I have seen people dragged down into poverty by the refusal to even consider not having a car. Because they grew up with one and can't imagine life without.

I learned to drive in my early twenties, working in a factory to pay for that and my other bills. I eventually got a family cast-off car, about 13 years old, which cost me quite a bit in repairs in the year I ran it. Managed to sell it as a runner with only 6 weeks' ticket on it when a redundancy left me on the ropes financially.

I had 3 cars after that time, all cheapies like fiestas 10+ years old. It's very stressful running an old car on a shoestring budget and I gave up my wheels in 1997. I'm insured for the parents' car and kid bruvs and drove his yesterday and will drive theirs today. I like to keep in practise, y'see.

If I really need wheels, my friendly neighbourhood car and van hire place will rent me a small car for £25/ day. Or, if I need some serious carrying power, something like a Transit van.

I wouldn't want to be without a driving license, even if I can happily live without a car.

ETA: I'm still shuddering from the very thought of slug-based legwear. Ewwwww!

DawnW

GreyQueen wrote: »

Can I join you in the grumpy corner?

I feel like tearing my hair out when confronted with people who express the opinion that you can't move into a house or a flat until it's fully-carpeted. Because they've got kids.

Gordon Bennett, however did I manage to live the first quarter of my life in a carpet-free zone and still thrive?!

It is funny, as all the posh magazines feature rooms with bare floorboards now :rotfl:

I have hard flooring all over downstairs through choice now, as it is so much easier to clean than carpets

paidinchickens

I lived half my adult life without a car when I lived and worked in town but now I'm a tad on the crippled side and live in a village at the top of a hill I couldn't be without one.

It's the one expense I would love to go without though, even if I were fit and well the two routes into the village are like death traps with many cars going 90mph on a short stretch of road due to frustration of being stuck in city traffic for an age.

I do believe I started moaning

PiC x

mardatha

My mum and dad never had a car ever, my dad was a real old style countryman and walked everywhere. If I lost the RV then I would cope without one, just - between online shopping and the family coming round to help with lifts. I cope without a tumble drier and can live without a microwave... am not a lover of "stuff"