From the middle ages to the twentieth century the population, or virtually all of them, were nearly always as poor as church mice and struggled their lives away. Their lives were shorter than ours, spent in a constant struggle against poverty. At least three quarters of the population were ground down in this way, so this proportion is likely to include our parents, it certainly included mine. But it changed during their lifetime and they couldn’t adjust to it.
Until the thirties, forties and fifties, our parents were either in a tied house owned by a Lord or a farmer and one sloppy touching of the forelock and they were out. Or if they were lucky, they rented a poor little terraced house, or two rooms, or a room, or part of a room. The rent collector would want his pence and shillings every Friday or the sticks of furniture were on the pavement in no time.
Poor buggers, that’s what they were, and this scraping and subservient life affected generations before us for centuries.
We are the generation of change. We don’t see much furniture on the pavement these days. We are the generation who can just remember the war, or if not, we can remember the ‘Six Five Special’, Buddy Holly and records that broke easily. If you start off with remembering Abba you are too late, you are not the generation of change, it had already happened.
How does the previous generation, our parents, differ from ours? With no disrespect they were inculcated with two shortcomings.
First, they were secretive. They did not want neighbours to know what they had got. Because they hadn’t got hardly anything. No two plates matched. There was just about a knife for everybody, and you could get the one with the thin springy discoloured blade, and the shrunken handle exposing an inch of the tang. So no one was invited into your house, none of our playmates could come in. We might skulk about outside covered in snow, or soaking wet, with hot-ache, but we couldn’t bring a friend in. They would go home and we would go home. Under no circumstances were we invited into the homes of my regular friends, who lived in the same circumstances as us. Their mother would come to the door, bar it, and hustle my pal in, barring my passage. ‘He’s got to have his tea.’ ‘a wash.’ ‘going to see his granny.’ Etc.
I did know two rich boys, one a farmers son. I went in there and there was a model railway filling the capacious loft of the farmhouse. The other was a townie, lived in huge flat with ceilings out of sight, all biscuits and meccano. So the well off didn’t mind a visit.
But the poor, like my family, due to pride, were ashamed of their way of life. The worn out uncut moquette sagging sofa, peg rugs and thin curtains on a wire.
In this large majority of the population there were generally skeletons in the cupboard. In the ‘old days’ there were often Uncles and Aunts whose antecedents would not bear close scrutiny. No fault, no one would blame, but before it was a positive advantage to be a single parent, widows needed a partner for sheer survival. It is a rule that these things always remained deadly secret. When we reach maturity we put two and two together and realise that Grandpa could not have fathered Uncle John or Auntie Beryl. But the taboo is very powerful, it can not be mentioned and the secret goes to the grave. It must be a strain to keep a secret so long but secretiveness was engendered in our prior generations. They would not talk about money either, I don’t know why. You would never know how much your parents earned, or how much any purchases, rare as they were, cost. Money was handled surreptitiously or as if it was radio-active. It was not in evidence at home either. There were no small change pots or wallets on the sideboard. I didn’t know what paper money looked like when I was young.
Which leads to the second characteristic of our previous generation.
Careful with money, tight, mean, economical. Call it what you will. The previous generation have not kept up with inflation, even if they became relatively well off, as many did. They regard everything as expensive, whatever the cost. Everybody got better off after Bill Haley and the Comets, but our parents couldn’t handle it very well, having spent years watching every halfpenny. Old habits die hard, in the case of our previous generation, they haven’t died at all. Many a parent, having bought their council house, then inflation reduced their mortgage to very little, have suddenly got money. There is no longer any need to cut bananas in half or buy old cakes. They just can’t spend, or give. No fault, can’t help it. You see despite everything being relatively cheaper than it ever was in their formative years, the price tag is six times what it was when they were shopping twenty years ago which is horrific to them. In the old days there was the rent to pay and shillings to put aside for the gas and electricity, and the insurance, for which a man called every Friday. Never mind a car and a phone, times were hard. Now they say ‘Everything is so dear.’ But actually everything now is relatively so cheap. The mantra in the old days was saving. Security for the future, for a rainy day. Poor devils couldn’t save much, if anything, but it was their aim, and their parents before them. Now old and much better off, the instinct is as powerful as ever. Needless economies are still practised, a deal of money is saved by our parents, giving them much satisfaction. It is never enough for them though.
Now we buy houses when we are young and climb the property ladder. We have all the furniture and appliances when we are married. We don’t save much, we spend instead. We spend money we haven’t even got, anathema to the previous generation. What a change has taken place in one generation.
Will there be such a dramatic change between us and the new generation? No. Definitely not, we’ve done it and soon everyone will be illegitimate, so no stigma there. We can use the skeleton cupboard for something else.
Circumstances made these characteristics which I have described, which affected our parents. We will no doubt create our own doubtful traits which I leave to the next generation to write about.
Peter
