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Gin,

I was not joking, I really did buy Mrs J a lawnmower for her 21st.

As an impoverished, recently married couple we had decided to buy one another practical gifts rather than frivolous ones until such time that we could afford to do otherwise. Other examples being the year I bought Mrs J a fridge for her birthday and the year I bought her a dining table for Christmas whilst the same year she bought me 4 chairs to go with it as my Christmas present.

There was no "Urgent" need for us to marry but we married without very much money behind us. Basically once the ceremony and the 2 day honeymoon in Somerset were over we had about £50 left over between us to start our married life together. Our first home was a rented upstairs flat in an old house (Rent 3 pounds 10 shillings a week), we had just a few sticks of furniture (Bed, settee, wardrobe, kitchen table/chairs) and some pots and pans (Mainly wedding presents). We were both working and within 6 months we had saved the £320 necessary to put down the deposit on our first bought home, a 2 bedroom ground floor maisonette which cost us £3,200. The maisonette had lawns front and rear, hence the need for a lawnmower.

As a matter of interest we sold that maisonette 5 years later for £6,250 and bought it for a second time in 1992 for £45,000 for our daughter.

hi all
xx


the sun was shining first thing this morning!

gone behind clouds now


and the street cleaner was going up and down the street early ............... must be spring soon!

The city leaves sweeping up all the leaves that fall in autumn until January or February. Have no idea why!!



s
xx

Hmmm, you were right Dea

You bought your first home for HOW MUCH :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0

That was the price of things in those days Gins. My housekeeping was £5 a week - 1968-9.


Jonesey, you remind me so much of our start to marriage life. OH was at college in Oxford and I moved down there to live with him. We had a flat over a garage and thought we were really posh because we had rugs along the hallway :-D

Like you, the rest of our possessions were mainly our wedding gifts or things we had bought cheaply. Those were the days though! It certainly taught us how to appreciate things when we could afford them........



Have been busy all day........autism day in town - home - baptism prep this evening. Jim jams on now and settled down for a couple of hours.....

we married in 1967, moved immediately to the US.

Our wedding gifts were all "small items" .............. china, crystal, etc. No furniture of any sort, although my-f-i-l gave us a cheque for "future use" to buy some furniture later.

We lived in a furnished apartment in Texas ............ OH had rented it 5 months before, and the first thing he had to do was go out and buy sheets and towels.

One year later, we moved up to Canada, and into an unfurnished apartment. F-i-l's money had been invested in the UK, so we didn't have immediate access to it.

The place, like apartments over here, did have fridge and stove, and was fully carpeted and curtained .... we slept on the floor in our sleeping bags for a coupl of nights until we got chance to go to the local Sears

....... and then we bought some stuff on a credit card ............ we bought a hide-a-bed and 2 chairs. The apartment manager found a folding card table that someone had abandoned in the storage area and lent us that and 2 white plastic chairs from the swimming pool area ....................... and that is what we had for the next 6 months!!


The hide-a-bed is long gone ................. but we still have the 2 chairs. They are the "half-tub" style, and have been recovered, but are still very comfortable.


My monthly salary as a schoolteacher in 1967 was £100 a month (before taxes) ............ my first job in Texas as a technician at the university was $400 US, and that was about £50 a month more!

Hope all the birthday peoples had good days. I have just seen a gorgeous pic of A*** with an enormous sundae.

Carpets and floor coverings. For the stairs in the rented flat we bought 2 x 12 foot wide by 1 foot long "End of roll" carpet pieces from a stall in Birmingham Rag Market. We cut each of them into 7 pieces just over 1'8" wide and we nailed a piece on each stair tread. If I remember correctly the total cost was £3, not bad for carpeting the stairs.

We also purchased a 12 foot square carpet from The Beehive store in Birmingham for £9. That was for the "Sitting Room" in the flat which measured about 16' x 14' so we bought a piece of lino which we cut into strips and placed them against the walls to cover the bits of floorboards not being covered by the carpet. That carpet moved with us to our next 2 homes. Our 3rd home was bought with fully fitted carpets so the carpet, still in good condition, was passed on to Mr's J's sister whose house didn't have fitted carpets.

As far as wages were concerned when we bought the maisonette I was working in an office earning £20 a week and Mrs J was a sewing machinist earning £18 a week. The mortgage repayments were to be £23 per month and at that time building societies insisted that your weekly income be greater than the monthly repayment but they would not take your wife's earnings into consideration. In order to obtain a mortgage I had to sweet talk my boss into telling the BS that my weekly earnings were £25.

Happy days.

Jonesey


it was the opposite here, when we came to be looking for a mortgage in 1972


The wife's income WAS taken into consideration .............. only we did not want mine to be considered.

The bank refused ...... my salary had to be included in all calculations...


so we went to the Teacher's Credit Union ...... and got immediate approval, based on OH's salary alone. It had to go to the Board for approval ............. but they had apparently never turned down the Manager's recommendation


and they didn't do it for us!


OH's first salary here in 1968 was $10,000 a year ............. which I think was roughly equal to £2,500 (exchange rate about $4 to £1).

By the time we bought the house, I think he was earning about $11,500

and, as you said ................


Happy Days!!



Entertaining was spaghetti with tomato and meat sauce, and a bottle of Chianti (in the wicker basket!!

LK Happy Birthday to your Grandaughter <3

Sylvia hope the physio helped are you all "chilled" now :-)

Just played catch up.
For my 40th I threw myself a party I was keeping it quiet) cos I was just out of hospital - by a few weeks - for what should have been a simple op BUT my heart stopped on the table and the op was abandoned. It took me hours to sleep off the Anesthetic.

So I had a birthday party ;-)

We got married in 1975 beat the other offers by £56.

We had my Grans bed and her kitchen larder (like the one in the Dingles house in Emmerdale)

Our sofas were my parents old ones and my Dad made us a table and 2 benches.

We got a deal on carpets and everything else was wedding presents.

Our "kitchen" was a scullery just had the cooker (left by previous owners) and a sink even had a folding door!

When we moved my friend bought the flat and she has just sold it for £100,000.

Didn't have central heating just gas fires no double glazing (the windows used to ice up on the inside in winter.

Oh but I loved that flat.

I've been immersed in the new Manchester records on ancestry

I'm finding all sorts of records for my families :-D

Breakfast is ready .....................



mind the puddles when you are walking over, and watch out for flying tree branches. The wind is pretty strong!!




porridge, with cream, brown sugar, dates, Golden syrup, bananas, and/or cinnamon


Selection of cold cereals

Toast (selection of breads)
croissants
barm cakes
hot cinnamon rolls


Full English

Cheese or ham and cheese omelette, with bacon, grilled tomatoes, and chef's potatoes

In the warmers ...................



bacon, ham, sausage patties, fried eggs, boiled eggs, grilled mushrooms, baked tomatoes, baked beans, chef's potatoes



raisin bran muffins, blueberry muffins, lemon and nut muffins





enjoy
xxx




s
xxx

we're going to go to our friends on the island next Tuesday through Friday.



please can you look after yourselves?????

Porridge, with cream, dates, golden syrup, bananas.....YUM YUM

Thank you Sylvs <3

Ive just been reading back and have found it really interesting - early married life back in the dark ages ;-) I guess it's all relative, then and now

I bought my first house (still in it) back in 1997. Got it at a knock down price, (£47K) it was slug invested, run down and had an underground spring in the back garden (or so the owners thought) so we got it about £20K cheaper than the going rate for the area

16 years later it's worth £300K. The underground spring turned out to be a leak from the neighbours drains and the slugs were banished when we dropped the height of the path at the back of the house

When I first moved in I used to get up on dark mornings, switch the lights on and the carpet in the living room would be covered in slugs :-0

Happy Days!!!

Thank you Sylvs......toast for me today <3


You're right Gins, it IS all relative and just goes to show that folk don't need to have 'everything' in order to be happy. In fact, working together on building up a home, tended to bring you closer together I think :-D


On the entertaining line........chicken in a basket was considered to be food heaven for a while and when scampi was introduced........oh my word, how exotic could one get? Vesta curries and paellas were absolutely wonderful for learning about 'foreign' food....... :-S :-D


As a child, Sunday tea or tea for visitors couldn't be anything other than tinned salmon sandwiches and a tin of mixed fruit with evaporated cream.


Such indulgence! :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Good morning all :-)

I would like a ham and cheese omelette, with bacon, grilled tomatoes and grilled mushrooms please............................Yuuummmmm :-D :-D

Thank you Sylvia <3

Dea Xxx

I can relate to the Sunday tea......as a child we always had Sunday lunch and mom would put tea out at about 6pm

Salmon sarnis, Yorkshire salad, homemade cakes and tea, using the best china. We also had tinned fruit, usually peaches with Carnation milk!

That's exactly what we used to have on a Sunday Ginns - minus the salad , and we didn't often get 'home-made' cakes!

This only happened when we had visitors though, not every Sunday!

I used to hate it if my great aunt Eliza came around as she would dip slices of bread and butter into the fruit juice and carnation milk !!! - Urgghhhh ! :-0

Do you remember that horrible tinned 'fruit salad' with tiny square chopped up bits of fruit and the odd bit of glace cherry?

Dea Xxx