Friday 12th Ocotber 2007
My mother imparted a lot of things to me before she died, one was how the wage my father brought home from the mine was divided up each week. We must have talked a lot come to think of it. She told me of the time when my father would bring home five pounds as his wage.
We lived in a rented cottage for which the rent was three shillings and sixpence. I remember the electric light being put in to our cottage. When that one bulb was switched on it must have been like our ancestors on March Hywel mountain seeing the harvest sun rise on Good Friday when they would climb the mountain in the dark to offer bread to the gods for a good harvest. As children we partook in that festival but altered it slightly to all the children of the village climbing the mountain on Good Friday to roll down our hot cross buns. Well the one electric light bulb and the iron that was plugged in only during daylight hours obviously as one could not iron in the dark, cost one shilling a week. When the electric man came my mother got a rebate on what she had used and so it became exciting to see the man empty the meter on the kitchen table and stack up the shillings dividing them into two piles, one for the electric company and one for us.
Apart from this rent and electric there were no more bills. We had no television, our water came from a spring and my father had a radio. I think there was a licence for that of a few shillings a year. So the total outgoings were in our household four shillings and sixpence leaving four pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence to be handled by the woman of the household. Think of the wage today that would need to be earned so that when all the bills were paid each month the woman of the household would be left with over 95% of the wage or salary.
Today I needed to go to Cardiff for an interview. I ate lunch in Harry Ramsdens in Cardiff Bay. The first time I have ever visited a Harry Ramsdens and something I will have to own up to at Slimming World on Tuesday night. Guess what, Harry Ramsden did not live up to my own meals of late which win by a mile. MY mother would have had a fit to know how much I paid for fish and chips.
