Poor......but RICH!

In a recent blog episode I told you that, as a family, we were poor.
In financial terms that is true.
Looking back, I now realise how hard it must have been for my parents to feed us all....provide us with clothes, and keep a roof over our heads.

At the time, which was just after the war, many families were in the same boat.
So going to school in 'hand me downs'...or clothes from the jumble sale, was the norm....or at least certainly not frowned on.
As children, we didn't hanker after branded clothes......and we wore what we were given...whether it was fashionable or not.

This, I think, is where the parents of that time had it much easier than parents of today.
There was no worry about keeping up to the latest trends....though there might have been the worry of how to find the money to have little Johnnys' shoes soled and heeled.....and would it be worth it...or would he grow out of them before they had got their moneysworth?

Poor, we were...but we were rich in experiences....and what our parents couldn't give us in the material sense was more than made up for in the time they gave to us.

My father worked in a weaving mill and was given a large piece of cotton drill...it had been spoiled by an oil spillage and was unsaleable.
Dad got out the sewing machine(yes, he could sew better than my ma....and she was better at woodwork and the do it yourself stuff) and made us a play tent.....we were the envy of our friends and there was intense rivalry over who would be allowed to use the tent with us.
It was used as a den for the whole of the summer........and then was packed carefully away until the good weather came back again.
Is is my imagination, or were summers hotter and longer way back then?

My father would take us on rambles.....up 'the clough'......we watched birds, picked flowers in the spring...berries in the autumn.......we caught sticklebacks in the stream....collected caterpillars and put them into jars, hoping to see them turn into butterflies.
One year my Dad must've come into some money.......I'm not sure quite how as he didn't do the pools or back horses......anyway he went out and bought a lovely red and black Morris 8 motor car.
He would collect us from school and we would go to Edisford Bridge......we would sit on the river bank and eat sandwiches,(potted meat, or beef paste and sometimes sardine and tomato....YUK, I NEVER ate those) drink ginger beer(stantons) out of a brown pot jug, and we believed we had landed in heaven.
There was a rope swing on the river bank and we would play for hours on that......paddle in the river...skim stones and in general have a really happy time.

In the winter we would listen to music.
My father had a large collection of 78 records......a lot of them were classical music and opera....and we liked it because it was what we had listened to from being very little.
My father could play the violin and my mother played the piano...we listened to the radio.....we played cards and board games.
We didn't have a television until the year of the coronation......and then it was only a nine inch screen. TV was only broadcast for a few hours each day....so there was no opportunity to sit 'glued to the box'.
In any case if we had to choose between playing out or watching TV.......the playing out won every time...even when the weather was less than good.

I wouldn't swap my childhood for the one todays children are having....because although we were poor....we had a rich life.