Thanks to Sharon and a Facebook link, I watched the BBC documentary 'Poor Kids'. I live in the 5th richest country in the world and yet every day, thousands of kids live in poverty and total squalor. I've put the link above and would ask any one who hasn't seen it, to do so. I don't think you can watch it if you live outside the UK. It's filmed, with the parents permission by just letting the children talk. What they say is devastating to hear.
When I think of my childhood, we were 'skint'. We lived in a cold house, washed in cold water every day but Sunday, which was bath day and we ate a variety of kinds of stew or soup. My parents were though, incredibly resourceful. My dad, and just about every body's dad fished of Par harbour wall, off Spit beach and off Polkerris. We ate soused mackerel and fried whiting, until, I probably stunk of it. Dad's idea of entertaining us was to take us 'crabbing' for the huge brown crabs that lurk in hidey holes in rock pools and we would drag them out with a 'crab hook'. He used to take us bird watching and lift us on his shoulders and if we promised to be very still and very quiet he would show us black bird nests and we would go back and see the chicks. We ate homemade bread with blackberry jelly and we ate it every day for breakfast. We had chickens in the back garden of our council house, behind the rows and rows of veg and we had eggs, but not many.
We had 'clamps' for root veg and kilner jars ranged on shelves in sheds filled with tomatoes, stewed fruit, more stewed blackberries. We would walk, with a knackered old pram to fetch parafin out of the Esso blue machine outside the iron mongers on Hambleys' corner. In fact, that knackered old pram (I remember feeling ashamed pushing that ****ing thing around! ) went to Dave's discount in St. Blazey, which was a fair old walk from where we lived and mum used to buy a 'fore quarter' of beef, all of which must have died of old age and needed the regulation stewing for days on end on top of the 'rayburn' in the front room. But, we ate hearty meals and there was always plenty of it.
Everything happened around that rayburn. School blouses and knee high white socks used to go in a big jam pan on top of it, with a sprinkle of Tide and would come out gleaming, they they would be hung over the Rayburn to dry. In the summer, they blew dry in the breeze. We used to fetch a kettle off it to wash up and wash ourselves (the council never fixed the back boiler in all the twenty three years mum lived there!) We would sit by it as our only source of heat, the oven door open on a Sunday as we sat with our back to it to dry our hair. Bread would be rising on it, baking in it, washing would bubble away in a big pan ontop to be fished out and spun in a spinny machine that mum would have to sit on to stop it wandering around the front room as she caught the water in a bowl beside it.
Knit wear came from jumble sales, was unpicked, re-knitted into waistcoats and pullovers for us all and crocheted into blankets for our beds. Clothes were altered and refashioned. When A line skirts were 'out' and straight skirts were 'in', mum would alter them, collars were turned, school jumpers unpicked and refashioned to fit the next term. Shoes were always cleaned and our school coat brushed before we left the house.
Entertainment came from the local church groups, Sunday school, the village fete, the school fair and Christmas Bazaar. The ECLP works do for kids at Christmas, with something nice and new to wear, mum and dad dancing, mum a bit tiddly on a glass of Blue Nun and dad with a pint of Watneys.
We were by any comparison, a skint family. Sweets were for Christmas and birthdays, holidays were unheard of, we some times went cold and we didn't have a choice of food. Unlike the kids in the documentary, my parents kept us scrubbed and clean to the point of gleaming, fed us before they fed themselves, did the very best to keep us warm, read library books to us, walked us to Sunday school, and even made toys for us to play with. After watching in awe at Blue Peter, where they made a house for a 'Cindy doll', unknown to me, my dad worked quietly at night and made one for me, and the furniture! Mum used to make dolls clothes for us and my brother had the most amazing homemade 'dilly cart'. I remember hating Christmas because other kids would boast and at the beach kids had ice cream and I didn't. But I can look back now , at the most amazing childhood of home grown food, homemade clothes, and parents, who without any money, sometimes unemployed due to be off 'long term sick' did the very, very best they could for us.
Please follow the link to the BBC i-player, please watch it. I also felt compelled to do something. I found the local 'foodbank' in the area where I work and where I live.
I could have been the unlucky ones, some of the kids I went to school with were dirty, smelly, tatty and lived in houses that smelt of chip fat and ciggies, mine smelt of homemade bread and crisp drying laundry. As I said, there by the grace of God go I.
Until tomorrow,
Froogs xxxxxx