week 35.08

                      Tendring Topics…………..on Line

 

Park and Ride?

 

            The 'Clacton Gazette' headline 'Town to get Park and Ride' puzzled me.  Park and Ride Schemes surely operate where retail outlets or other attractions are clustered together the centre of a large town and attract scores of car-driving visitors from elsewhere.   The cars are left in large car parks on the outskirts and buses transport their occupants into the town centre for their shopping or other expeditions.

 

            Clacton isn't really like that though. it isn't a large town and sadly perhaps, people don't flock to Clacton from all over southern East Anglia for the town's shopping facilities. For those, they prefer Ipswich or Colchester. The biggest attraction in Clacton for outsiders remains the sea front and the pier.  I don't believe that many holiday or day visitors would want to leave their cars at an out-of-town car park and go to their final destination on a bus.  Folk who use town centre shopping facilities are mostly people like me. We live within the area but can't, or prefer not to, walk the half-mile or so to the shops.  With my mobility scooter (my 'iron horse') I have no problem, but local motorists do need adequate parking in or near the town centre. So do holiday visitors.

 

            It turns out that what the council have in mind is not a 'park and ride' scheme at all but a bus shuttle service linking the out-of-town Clacton Factory Outlet (you may still know it as Clacton Shopping Village!) and the Co-op Supermarket off Oxford Road, with the town centre. Are the proprietors of the car parks for those facilities happy about their being used by shoppers and holiday visitors making for the town centre?  They need not worry.  It just won't happen!

 

            Another 'bright idea' that the council is considering in an effort to rejuvenate Clacton is to give different parts of the town their own identity like, I suppose, Mayfair for the seriously posh, Harley Street for expensive medicine, the 'East End' for cockneys, Trafalgar Square for demos. and Soho for sleaze!

 

            I quote from the Clacton Gazette: 'Rosemary Road could become known as Restaurant Corner, Pallister Road for its cafés, High Street for experimental culture, Station Road for domestic services, Jackson Road for fashion and Pier Avenue/West Avenue for major brands'.

 

            It's certainly a novel idea and one that would never have occurred to me. Can you see it catching on though?

 

 I did once hear Station Road unkindly referred to as 'The Avenue of the Forty Thieves' because it was the venue of the Town Hall and of many of Clacton's solicitors and estate agents!  I don't think though that that's quite the kind of designation that the Council has in mind.

 

I don't wish to be uncharitable but both the 'park and ride' and the 'streets with their own identity' schemes seem to me like the despairing efforts of someone who desperately wants to restore Clacton's prosperity, but just can't think how to do it!

'It's an ill wind………………..

 

            Thinking back to the days, not so long ago really, when I was writing Tendring Topics (in print) I recall that a recurring theme was that of the nuisance, and the danger, of abandoned cars.

 

            At one time there were two such wrecks, I remember, that I passed every time I drove into Clacton.  One was in my own road, the other in St. Osyth Road, less than a quarter of a mile away.  They were unsightly. Children explored and played in them, endangering life and limb.  They were an obstruction and after dark, a traffic hazard.  What was worse nobody, not the Police, nor the District Council, nor the County Council, seemed to have the responsibility of moving them, so they often stayed where they were for weeks.

 

             The absence of once-familiar objects is always much less obvious than their presence!   It wasn't until I saw a reference to abandoned cars in the local press that I realized that I hadn't seen one for years.  It is true that I don't travel about the district as much as I once did, but I do get around Clacton quite a bit and, from time to time, one or other of my sons takes me further afield.   A few years ago there was no need to go looking for abandoned vehicles.  They forced themselves on our attention.

 

            The reason for the absence of these, once all too familiar, objects?  There are several, including the fact that Tendring District Council now offers a free service for the disposal of unwanted vehicles.  Another important factor though, is the rise in the price of such scrap metals as steel, aluminium and copper, all to be found in vehicle bodies, wheels and wiring.

 

            It is said that scrap metal merchants will now pay up to £200 for a vehicle that just a few years ago they would have charged £50 to remove!.  I hope, by the way, that Tendring Council is claiming, and obtaining, the going rate for the vehicles that they dispose of!

 

            The rising price of scrap metal has in recent months produced an epidemic of thefts of lead from roofs, and of every kind of removable metal object, from taps and stop-cocks to copper wiring, from domestic, commercial and public buildings.

 

  It seems though that it has also contributed to the reduction of a nuisance and a danger in our streets!

 

            It truly is an ill wind that blows nobody any good!

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                                   'Christmas is coming……'

 

            It is a depressing thought that last Monday (25^th August) was the very last Public holiday before Christmas.  'Summer' is all but over and already I notice that the evenings and mornings (I'm generally an early riser!) are getting darker.  It is all the more depressing because most of us feel that for the second year in succession we simply haven't had a summer.  There have been a very few warm days, a number of pretty chilly and windy ones, lots of rain (though still less for us than for most places in the UK!) and some really violent thunderstorms.  We certainly haven't had that one-time annual succession of warm sunny days that, when I was a keen gardener, would have had me praying fervently for a few storm-clouds.

 

            Those who had thought that, whatever disasters global swarming might bring to other people, for us it would mean Mediterranean warmth and sunshine which would bring thousands flocking to our golden beaches must be bitterly disappointed.  Our prevailing winds sweep, as before, over the Atlantic Ocean before reaching us.  Since they are now warmer than they once were, they have the capacity to collect and hold even greater volumes of water vapour than in the past. This they deposit on the British Isles, giving us  'monsoon' type weather throughout most of the summer.

 

            Surprisingly, our seaside holiday resorts appear not to have done as badly as might have been expected. The weather for Clacton's Carnival Week was decidedly mixed (a friend of mine living on the procession route felt particularly sorry for some bedraggled and soaked-to-the-skin little Brownies that she saw on one of the floats) but was judged by the organisers to be a success.  The Air Show too, which enjoyed two days of dry weather, was also a success with an estimated 20,000 spectators over the two days.

           

            Our hotels, boarding houses and holiday caravan sites don't seem to have done too badly either.  It may be that the rising cost of air travel and of holidays abroad is forcing more people to holiday in the UK and a great many of them are choosing to come to an area which, if not offering Mediterranean sunshine, is at least drier and sunnier than practically anywhere else on these rather damp and wind-swept islands.

 

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                                 The Terrible Tudors

 

            No, I'm not referring to the dynasty but to the tv series of that name.  It's all very well to say that it's just a tv drama and isn't meant to be a factual documentary.  Surely where historical evidence is beyond dispute an effort should be made to stick to the known facts.  Today's educational priorities mean that for a great many viewers that series is all that they know and all that they will ever know about the Tudors.

 

            Having a dark haired Henry VIII is bad enough, but then we have a clean shaven Pope and a clean shaven Thomas More (it was he whose last words to his executioner were that his luxurious beard should be spared as it had done nothing to offend the king!). Anne Boleyn is portrayed as no more than a scheming and unprincipled gold digger. Worst of all, Thomas Cranmer (one of the most scholarly of Archbishops and author of the Church of England's incomparable 'Book of Common Prayer) is caricatured as a shallow and timeserving mountebank.

 

            Do you remember the former BBC tv series 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII' and its sequel 'Elizabeth R'?  They probably had their anachronisms and historical inaccuracies too but I did feel that they were trying to portray an aspect of historical truth.   I can't feel that about 'The Tudors', the principal aim of which seems to be to titillate!

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Week 34.08

                           Tendring Topics……on Line

 

                                   St. Trinian's-on-Sea?

 

            When I was at my secondary school in Ipswich in the '30s I can't remember ever seeing a policeman on the premises.  Most of us cycled to school in those days so I suppose it's likely that one or other of us was at some time caught out in a minor cycling offence, though again I can't remember any such incident. The school maintained its own discipline and maintained it very effectively. Corporal punishment (no, I'm not condoning it but in the '30s it was, although sparingly used, a fact of school life) and hours of detention were very real threats.  I am quite sure that had any one of us been found guilty of anything approaching criminal behaviour he would have been instantly expelled, a sentence from which there would have been no appeal.

 

            It may well be said scathingly, 'well, of course, in those days teachers ruled by fear'. Some may feel that that was better than no rule at all. When everyone feared  the teacher, there was much less need to fear the bully, the thief, the arsonist and the vandal.

 

            That, of course, was the better part of a century ago. I am inclined to think though that the situation was much the same when my sons were at Clacton County High School some thirty years later.

 

            Today, everything is very different.  When I first heard that Clacton's County High School, Colbayns High School and Bishops Park College were each to have a dedicated police officer with the school as his base I thought that it must surely be some kind of temporary public relations exercise.  He or she must be there to impress on the minds of the pupils that police officers were ordinary approachable human beings to whom they could speak at any time about any of their problems.  I didn't dream that they were there to detect and discourage criminal behaviour among the children themselves.

 

            I could hardly have been more wrong.  PC Williams, a CCHS 'old boy', recently reported that 141 'incidents' were reported at his old school during the past academic year.  16 pupils had been arrested and 105 were dealt with through 'restorative justice' – a meeting between the victim, the wrong-doer, PC Williams and both lots of parents.

 

            The incidents included 36 cases of bullying, 16 thefts, 41 assaults, 15 incidents of criminal damage, 10 threats, 10 internet related offences, and 8 'nuisance' offences.   There were six other offences including two of a sexual nature and two drug related.  Five students from year 11 (I think that that means they were sixteen-year olds) were expelled following the most serious assault case.

 

            Perhaps the most worrying thing is that PC Williams really feels that things had been even worse and that his presence had made a difference.  He showed a graph indicating that there had been a drop in bullying, assaults, thefts and criminal damage.

 

 PC Cheryl Stubbins at Bishops Park College, seems to have had an even tougher job.   She finds hope in the fact that 'arrests have decreased since Christmas' and that a 'troublesome' group of 15 and 16 year olds are leaving school.  One of her early experiences as a dedicated PC at Bishops Park was being called 'a pig and other names'.  Now she feels that she is starting to win the pupils over because she is usually addressed as 'Miss'!

 

            Do our secondary schools really make St. Trinian's look like a well-disciplined convent?  It should, of course, be said that the trouble-makers, vandals, thieves and bullies are still a minority.   PC Williams reported that there were 141 'incidents' last year at CCHS.  We don't, of course know how many pupils were involved in each incident but if we add 200 to that figure it still comes to a small proportion of the total student body of 1,700.

 

            It is a very worrying minority though which, in my opinion, is a product of today's secular, materialistic and acquisitive society.   I wonder if at Bishops Park College, the situation would have been the same if, as some of us had hoped, it had been allowed to become a 'faith school' attached to the Church of England?

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                               Berating the Elderly

 

            I don't often allow letters published in local papers to annoy me.  Life is too short and my blood pressure is too high anyway. However I have to admit that a letter from Graham Stutton of Clacton's Rush Green Road, published recently in the Clacton Gazette, did get under my skin.  Silly really! Because nothing that he complains about in his letter actually applies to me personally.

 

            Mr Stutton asks rhetorically 'Why some retired folk get pleasure in using the roads that lead to Morrisons, Lidl and Clacton Market at 8.30 am, when the rest of us are on their way to work or are dropping our children off at school?'  He goes on to say that he has been unlucky enough 'for several of the past Tuesdays, to get stuck behind the same old boy on his way to Morrison's.  If you're reading this, kindly put your foot down for another five miles an hour please'.

 

            I wonder Mr Stutton ever considers the possibility that that 'old boy' may be thinking. 'I wish that impatient young lad just behind me would maintain a bigger gap between our cars.  I'm going slow enough to allow him to overtake me – and at this time in the morning there's not all that much traffic in the other direction'.  Of course, if Mr Stutton were to leave his home just five minutes earlier he would be less in a hurry to get to work, and would probably be on the road before the 'old boy' anyway.

 

            I don't drive a car nowadays but I do like to get to Morrison's at about 8.30 because there is less of a crush at that time and I am more likely to be able to get the kind of shopping trolley that I prefer.  If I were still a motorist I would want to go early to make sure of a parking spot not too far from the entrance doors.

 

            Use of the highways at inconvenient times is not the only practice of us oldies that irritates Mr Stutton.  'Banks and post offices are clogged up with retired folk at lunchtimes too, which is frustrating for those of us who have just a half-hour break for lunch; so next time you see or hear the elderly slate the younger generation remember they can be equally bad'.

 

            I hardly think that using the highways, the banks and the post offices at times inconvenient to dynamic young Mr. Stutton is really 'equally as bad' as the activities of some young, and indeed some middle aged people, regularly reported in the press.  Age does tend to limit the range of possible human misdemeanour!

 

            I am tempted to remind Mr Stutton that he too will be old one day.  However, bearing in mind his obvious impatience, and his apparent intolerance and short temper that might not be true.

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                                    Golden Olympics!

 

            Where athletic sports and team games are concerned I am not so much a 'has-been' as a 'never-was-a'!   All my life I have been useless at every one of them.

 

            I never knew quite why.  It wasn't for want of trying.  I would have loved to have been one of those sporting heroes I read so much about in the comic books (we called them 'tuppeny bloods' because they were full of 'blood and thunder!') that were popular in my childhood and youth.

 

            Nor, at least when I grew up, was it lack of physical strength.   As a POW at a working camp in Germany I regularly carried 1cwt sacks of potatoes or coal (occasionally 1.5 cwt sacks of flour and at least once, and for a short distance, 2cwt sacks of sugar) on my back.  I dug graves, worked in an iron foundry, and helped move heavy furniture, machinery and scrap metal. Yet, when I was home again, I struggled to pass the army's physical fitness test!

 

            However, even I have found myself getting really excited about British successes at the Beijing Olympics, at seeing Britain third in the medal table and ahead of medal winning favourites like Australia Germany and Russia.

 

            The only physical activity at which I have ever shown even a glimmer of promise was swimming.  I was never of competition (even local competition) standard, but I do hold the bronze medallion of the Royal Life Saving Society and a certificate for having, on one memorable occasion, swum a measured mile.

 

            My swimming days are long over but, perhaps because of them, I particularly warmed to the 19 year old British girl whose swimming has won her two gold medals. She had imagined that the competition at Beijing would be just 'a trial run' for the 2012 London Olympics where she had really hoped to win a medal!

 

            In the midst of all this success felt especially sorry for Paula Radcliffe.  She always seems such a very likeable young woman when interviewed on tv, and has pressed on, even though dogged by injuries and ill-health.  How wonderful it would be if she really were able to compete in those 2012 Olympics on her home ground….and strike gold!

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Week 33.08

                            Tendring Topics ….on Line

 

Another Encounter with the NHS

 

            On Thursday, 7^th August I was to have a relatively harmless skin cancer lesion excised from my left ear at Colchester University Hospital's Elmstead Day-Treatment Centre.  The appointment, for 9.20 a.m., had been made three weeks earlier. I was half an hour early and was surprised therefore when, very shortly after I had signed in, I was told that the surgeon would like to see me right away.

 

            I was also mildly surprised to find that the surgeon was a very pleasant young woman who was clearly desperately unhappy with the message that she had to deliver.  It appeared that she had unexpectedly had to give priority to two surgical cases requiring a general anaesthetic (mine required only a 'local') and that she therefore wouldn't be able to deal with my problem today.  She would arrange for me to have another appointment at the very earliest opportunity.

 

            Well!  I knew that it was not her fault, but it was no good my trying to disguise my feelings.  I was bitterly disappointed.  I said that I had come all the way from Clacton by taxi and that I would now have to phone for a taxi to take me home again. I told her not to bother with a fresh appointment.  My ear really wasn't bothering me seriously and, if I were given another appointment, how would I know that that wouldn't be broken too?  At 87 my time wasn't a commodity that I was inclined to waste on fruitless and expensive journeys!

 

            I made my way to the waiting room, made my phone call and sat down dejectedly to wait for the taxi to arrive.  A lady from Harwich, with a problem similar to mine, arrived escorted by two friends and was directed to the surgeon to be told the same thing.

 

            Five minutes later a nurse bustled in.   They thought now that they might be able to squeeze me, and just possibly the Harwich lady too, into the morning's schedule.  I phoned the taxi firm again!  They would contact the driver by radio and recall him.  He probably wouldn't have gone too far.

 

            Things were looking up. We were both conducted to cubicles, to change into operating theatre gowns, don our dressing gowns and then proceed to another waiting room.  And wait we did; wait, wait and wait!  Fortunately the Harwich lady, her two friends and I, found each other to be agreeable company. As we chatted companionably, the hours passed. 

 

            Our ordeal had begun shortly after 9.00 a.m.  We were given tea and biscuits at about 11 a.m. and told that the long delay was due to an operation taking far longer than had been expected.  We began to lose heart.  We understood that no operations were performed in the afternoon, but when did 'afternoon' begin?

 

            12 noon passed and 1.00 p.m. approached.  Just before one, the theatre nurse came into the room.  An operation that had been expected to take one hour had taken three.  They deeply regretted that they wouldn't be able to deal with the Harwich lady that day but they would deal with me.  I felt badly about that but it was taken very philosophically (much more so than it would have been by me!) and my place in the queue had, it appears, always been more certain.

 

            Just after 1 p.m. I signed the 'consent form' and was taken to the operating theatre.  The only painful part of my operation, for which the surgeon apologised profusely, was the injection, at half a dozen points round my ear, of the local anaesthetic. Of the operation itself I was well aware that my head was being worked upon, but I felt neither pain nor discomfort.  The surgeon chatted in a relaxed and friendly way both to me and to the theatre staff throughout the operation. Asking the theatre nurse for different scalpels, pads and other pieces of equipment, I noticed that she said 'please' and 'thank you' every time.  How different from the operating theatre behaviour of the imperious prima-donnas of tv's  Holby City!

 

            The operation over (I was exactly thirty minutes on the table) I was escorted back to the ward and given an excellent cup of tea and some toast, butter and jam or marmalade.  It was very welcome.  The time was 2.00 p.m. and I had breakfasted at 6.00 a.m.!

 

            I was given post-operative advice and told that I would have to come back to Colchester (but to the Essex County Hospital!) in about ten days time to have the stitches removed and again in about three weeks to discuss the biopsy on my other ear.  Would it really have been impossible for the stitches to be taken out and the discussion to have taken place in Clacton, or even over the phone?

 

            Everybody in the Elmstead Day-Centre had been friendly, helpful and thoroughly professional.  I couldn't have wished for better attention and service – once the members of the staff were in a position to offer it!  My four hour wait and the fruitless wait of that very likeable lady from Harwich were certainly not the fault of anyone there.

 

            They were, like so many of the ills of today's society, the result of our blind worship of Cost Effectiveness, Productivity and Profitability, Mammon's unholy trinity.  Unless everyone is beavering away every minute of the working day we have a terrible fear that money is being wasted. Mammon certainly wouldn't like that!  Executives work unpaid hours of overtime. Further down the ladder, operatives snatch a sandwich lunch in front of the computer that has enslaved them. Both neglect their wives, their families and their own physical and mental health.

 

            This culture is particularly disastrous in the emergency, the medical and, in particular, the hospital services.  Time and Motion studies and similar exercises ensure that sufficient staff and equipment are available to cope with an average day's work.  There is 'no time to stand and stare'.  Admirable perhaps, but there is also no time in which to cope with unexpected emergencies, like those two 'general anaesthetic' cases that prevented the lady from Harwich from having her operation and almost prevented me from having mine.

 

            Emergency and Hospital Services are not really efficient unless there is enough 'slack' to accommodate the emergencies that can be depended upon to arise from time to time!

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Ankle-deep in Litter?

 

            Not quite perhaps.  The recent 'Panorama' programme on tv in which popular American travel writer Bill Bryson who (very sensibly in my opinion!) prefers to live in Britain, certainly did drive home though the seriousness of this problem in Britain today.

 

            It is not an entirely new problem.  For part of my childhood and youth I had the good fortune to live within a few hundred yards of Broomhill Park, one of Ipswich's least spoilt public open spaces.  The following piece of verse, engraved on a metal plate was prominently displayed there:

 

Friend, when you walk, or sit and take your ease,

On moor, or fell, or under spreading trees,

Pray leave no traces of your wayside meal,

No paper bags, no scattered orange peel,

No daily journal scattered on the grass.

Others may view these with distaste – and pass.

Let no one say, and say it to your shame

That all was beauty here, until you came.

 

            'How very twentieth century!' you may well think.  Paper bags, orange peel, daily journal; for all of those it could at least be said that they were ultimately bio-degradable.  While few things in the twenty-first century are built to last, third millennium litter is the exception. Our throw-away plastic bags, wrappers and containers, and our drink cans will last, if not for ever, certainly for a good deal longer than any of us. 

 

            The same can be said of litter's 'big brother'; the larger items of domestic, commercial and building waste deposited by the fly-tipper; old baths and sinks, mattresses, supermarket trolleys, broken lawn mowers, grass cuttings and garden waste, old tv sets and other electrical equipment.

 

Just take a look in any lay-by, in any open space and, in fact, in any space, however small, in an urban area that isn't obviously the responsibility of anyone in particular.  One such small space existed just off a public footpath a few yards from my home.  It was eventually cleared by the Council only to start to fill with unsavoury rubbish again within days.  Now, thanks to the enterprise, vigilance and hard work of my neighbours it has been cleared and fenced off and will, I hope, attract the litter droppers and the fly-tippers no more.

 

            On the morning following the programme about Britain's litter problem there was yet another tv programme about the yobbish and drunken behaviour of Britons abroad!  Have these two social problems the same basic roots? In an age in which we are continually being told to 'respect' this, that and the other of other people's beliefs, tradition and practices and to feel pride in the British Olympic athletes and in our armed forces, have we lost our own self-respect and any sense of pride in our own communities?

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Week 32.08

                            Tendring Topics…….on line

 

                             Tendring's Green Gardeners

 

            Just a few years ago I was a keen, if not really expert, gardener.   I was also a very enthusiastic maker of compost.   I had three compost bins (two of them purchased from Tendring Council) continuously in use.  Every scrap of kitchen waste and every weed from the garden that could safely be composted was recycled in one or other of them.  An electric shredder made it possible for me to add shredded prunings from my shrubs and apple trees to the bins.

 

            From time to time I also descended onto Clacton's beaches armed with a couple of plastic bin-bags to harvest stranded seaweed, full, so I was told, of vital plant-growth minerals to enrich the ripening compost.

 

            In the spring I would dig trenches where I intended to grow my sweet peas, my runner beans and my courgettes during the coming season and line the bottom of them with soaked newspapers.  At that time I was reading regularly a daily broadsheet, the Evening Gazette and the weekly Clacton Gazette, so I had quite a lot of them!  I would then empty the contents of those compost bins into the trenches, raking the earth back over the compost before erecting my sweet pea and bean poles.

 

            Meanwhile, my sweet pea, runner bean and courgette seeds would have been germinating and beginning their development in seed trays, at first indoors and later in a garden cold frame.

 

            When I considered that the danger of frost was past I would open up my frame to harden off the seedlings and plant them out, doing all that I could to protect them from the slugs, aphids, birds, drought, late frosts and icy winds that immediately conspired to destroy them!  Surplus compost was dug into areas where I intended to plant tomatoes, broad beans, peas, cabbages and potatoes. As a result of all this I produced vegetables that made a very useful contribution to the family larder and I could usually feel particularly proud of my sweet peas, runner beans and courgettes.

 

            I also felt called to spread the gospel of organic gardening.  I probably bored friends, acquaintances and relatives out of their minds with my enthusiasm for composting and the merits of adding harvested seaweed to the compost bin!  I would write about it too whenever the opportunity presented itself (and probably some times when it didn't!) in my 'Tendring Topics' column in the Coastal Express.

 

            Old age and arthritis have robbed me of my enthusiasm for both gardening and compost-making.  Living alone I find that if I stick to frozen vegetables from the Supermarket, there is very little wastage.  This is just as well because I note that Tendring District Council will not provide a 'green' salvage collection for kitchen and garden waste. Because so many Tendring householders compost their own 'green' waste, such a collection would not be economically viable.

 

Is it just possible that my former enthusiasm may have played a tiny part in creating that situation?

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How much pay did Grandpa really get?

 

             Do you get tired of hearing oldies like me telling young folk how very lucky they are today?  I'm probably guilty of doing it myself on occasion.  'When I started work in 1937 my pay was seventeen shillings and sixpence a week (that's 87p in today's money) and lots were worse off than me', or 'I don't know what the soldiers of today are moaning about.  When I was called up to fight Hitler in 1939 my pay was just two shillings (10p) a day'.

 

When you hear that sort of thing you probably know perfectly well that inflation has made sure that the purchasing power of seventeen and sixpence in 1937 and of two shillings ('a couple of bob') in 1939 was nothing like the same as 87p or 10p today.  You can't argue though because you really have no idea what is the equivalent in real terms of those sums today.

 

Now though, if you're on the internet, the facts are at your disposal at the click of a key!   Access www.measuringworth.com and you'll find that you can discover  the equivalent purchasing power in 2007 of any sum of money from the Middle Ages onwards.  It will still be an approximation of course because many things that you can purchase today simply weren't available to earlier generations.  However, it will be a lot closer than a straight conversion for pounds, shillings and pence to new pounds and pence.

 

For instance my pay as a junior clerk/trainee sanitary inspector with Ipswich Corporation in 1937 was, in fact, seventeen and sixpence a week.    In 2007, that would have amounted in real terms to £40.46 a week.   It was a lot more than 87p but still wasn't princely for a working day of 7.5 hours Monday to Friday plus 4 hours on a Saturday; below today's minimum wage in fact. However, plenty of young people were earning less than that.   What's more young people in those days were expected to hand over the bulk of their wages to their mums to help the family income, retaining just a few shillings (perhaps the equivalent of £5 today) as pocket money.

 

When, as Territorial volunteer, I was called up for military service in 1939, I was paid two shillings a day.  I did however continue to live in my own home for several months. During this time my parents were paid a billeting allowance.   The army clothed me and fed me, so that two shillings a day (with a purchasing power of over £31 per week in real terms today) was solely pocket money.  I was better off than I had ever been.  No wonder I was able to take my new girl friend 'to the pictures', buy her a fish and chip supper afterwards and present her with an occasional box of chocolates!

 

In 1948, newly qualified as a Sanitary Inspector I took up a post in rural Suffolk on £390 a year (the equivalent of £10,201).  I think you would have to offer more than that to attract anyone with a professional qualification today.  On the other hand in 1953 I began my second career as a spare-time freelance writer and sold my first article to a national magazine for five guineas (five pounds five shillings or, in today's money £5.25).   However its purchasing power fifty-five years ago was the equivalent of £105.50 for about 1,000 words!   No wonder I continued to try to write!

 

When I retired from the Council in 1980 to pursue a full-time writing career, my salary, as the Council's Public Relations Officer had been £7,000 a year, with the purchasing power today of £21,000; not all that generous for a fairly senior officer who had also been the Council's 'official spokesman' to the news media.  I was, I think, the lowest paid founder member of the newly formed Society of District Public Relations Officers.

 

So, next time Grandpa tells you how he began work on ten bob a week (50p) and lucky to get it, check with www.measuringworth.com You'll probably discover that he was very poorly paid, but not quite as poorly as he'd like you to believe. 

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                             When the Red Flag's flying

 

No, not the red flag of revolution!  The red flag that flies on the sea front  when it is dangerous to bathe from the beaches.

 

Two news stories of swimmers who had, it seems, ignored the warning red flags and had had to be rescued from the sea off Clacton made me wonder if they had understood the significance of the this signal, or even if they had noticed it.  A red flag generally denotes danger but one sometimes displayed a considerable distance from the waterline, would not, in inexperienced eyes, necessarily mean danger to bathers.

 

   The condition of the sea at the time should have reinforced the warning.  But then, among the tv adverts, we regularly see surfers happily negotiating no-doubt computer enhanced breakers house-top high.  Why on earth, the viewer may think, should anyone fear the waves that crash on Clacton's beach?

 

The red flag is, of course, only one of the signalling flags that may be displayed.   Do you know what a red and yellow flag means?  You might, working on the analogy of red, amber and green traffic signals, have imagined that it meant that the sea could be dangerous today.  Stay out unless you're a strong swimmer.

 

In fact it means almost exactly the opposite.  It is safe to bathe because the life saving teams are on duty; here that means from 10.00 a.m. till 6.00 p.m. seven days a week during the holiday season.

 

Then there's the black and white chequered flags that indicate an area in which water sports such as water skiing or water cycling are taking place.  Swimmers are advised to keep away.

 

Finally, an orange wind stocking, usually blowing in the wind.   That means that the wind is blowing offshore and you should not go into the sea with an inflatable.  

 

That's a warning that I could have done with 72 years ago when, then aged 15, I was on holiday in Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey with an uncle and aunt and three cousins from London.  We were staying in a very early and rudimentary holiday camp and my cousins had brought with them an inflatable Lilo bed, quite a novelty in those days.

 

Cousin Ron was about a year younger than me.  He had a twin sister and another sister just a little older than me but I think, probably much wiser!  Ron and I were good friends.  He often stayed with us in Ipswich during part of the summer holiday so we knew each other well.

 

About half-way through our holiday in Leysdown we decided that we'd experiment with that Lilo.   We inflated it, took it down to the shore and, sitting astride it paddled up and down a few yards from the beach.  Very pleased with this we ventured a bit further away from the shore, and a bit further still.   A chilly breeze started up and we decided to paddle back to the beach and found that we couldn't.  We were being blown further and further out by the strengthening breeze.  What was worse, we realized that we were drifting along the shoreline as well as away from it.  We were in the Thames Estuary and beginning to come into the outward flow of the great river!

 

Luckily Ron's elder sister spotted our plight and told their dad.   He had a word with a canoeist paddling his kayak in the shallows and, within minutes, his paddle was flailing as he cut through the water towards us.  With us hanging on to a rope attached to the stern of his kayak he towed us ashore – to be told all about our crass stupidity by my uncle, Ron's dad!

 

I have to say that Ron and I had been in trouble together before….and were to be again!   However on that day I did learn all about the perils of inflatables in an offshore breeze and have always watched anxiously when, on the beach, I have seen children or young people playing in the water with one of them.

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