David Wood this time talks about the hourly rate of pay in 1960’s Goldenhill when it was a minimum wage. David continues with his story by also saying what the young people used to do to pass the time away when getting bored.
David’s story starts by him saying, Let me go back a little, when I was a paper boy my pocket money was eleven shillings for about twelve hours work over the five days from Monday to Saturday.
When I started to work my pay was two pounds and thirteen shillings, for this I went out of the house at 7-15 am and came back in at 5-15 pm.
In total, I was out of the house for 50 hours and my pocket money was only ten shillings per week, a shilling worse off and I thought I was better at Maths than my mum was.
There wasn’t a lot of spare money to be spent on toys but we never seemed to be at a loss for things to do.
On the odd occasion that we might actually be bored, we would kick a tin can around the streets, it not only gave us healthy exercise it also annoyed the life out of the grownups, just a little mischief, nothing malicious.
Another annoying pastime was to wedge either a lollipop stick or a folded cigarette packet into the spokes on your bike and pretend it was a motor bike with the noise it produced.
Until next time you can read more of David’s yesteryear stories by clicking on the local memories tab at the top of the page.
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