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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