The mystery of Orwell's missing millions
Rowland McDonnell
nominally about Hilary Spurling's `The girl from the fiction department'
but really rather more about what happened to all the dosh, how come
Sonia died so poor, and what did the late Jack Harrison (who was the
chap in charge of her business affairs with sole control of the money,
according to the Eye) have to do with it all?
Excerpts:
`The Orwell scholars who have followed in [Sonia's] wake have had to be
exceedingly cautious about what they said about all this [the fact that
loads of books were sold but Sonia got a pittance]. Michael Sheldon,
for example, whose `Orwell, The Authorised Biography' appeared in 1991,
received a letter from Harrison, Son, Hill, and Co while was was at work
on the book warning of trouble if he so much as mentioned the firm's
name.
Naturally enough, `The girl from the fiction department' does not openly
accuse Orwell's financial manager of fraud - no doubt Hamish Hamilton's
lawyers went through it with a fine toothed comb - but the implication
is there on every page of the section devoted to Sonia's declining
years.'
`What, however, can be deduced from Hilary Spurling's meaningful
juxtapositions of Orwell's royalties (£100,000 a year from Secker and
Warburg in the 1970s) and his widow's penury? Basically Mrs Spurling
and a great many others seem to believe that Sonia Orwell was the object
of a major fraud by Jack Harrison. What does the Orwell Estate,
currently administered by the literary agents A.M. Heath, think about
this? It would be nice to know.'
Rowland.
--
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selene1022
What does Richard Blair have to say about all of this? Shelden says
that he benifited from a huge insurance policy after Orwell's death,
but no mention of Sonia ever helping him out (Shelden says that she
didn't like Rick.) Since the estate now goes to him, it seems like he
would be the one who would be saying something about a potential
fraud. Funny, that while Sonia hung on to the "Orwell" name (unlike
Eric Arthur who had his real name on his tombstone), Richard remained
a Blair. The fact that Sonia had little to do with Richard after
Orwell's death, when she had to know that Orwell hoped that she would
have a role in raising him, tells me just about everything I need to
know about her character.
JV
Bonnie
"From George Orwell Productions - which, under the terms of his
will, controlled the estate - she drew an initial widow's pension of
£40 a month (well below her husband's poverty-line threshold, it
might be noted), rising to £750 in the 1970s. The accountant who ran
the company reported that her share of its assets in 1977 was worth
about £75,000.
But apparently she never received even that, initiating a law suit
against the accountant to recover the copyrights - a battle she
finally won in an out-of-court settlement only a fortnight before
her death. The copyrights she then bequeathed to Orwell's adopted
son, Richard Blair, who, according to the Orwell expert Michael
Sheldon, "was living modestly on his salary as an employee of a
company that manufactured agricultural equipment".
A writer's estate now remains in copyright for 75 years after death,
so Mr Blair has another 23 years of income to enjoy. Who would wish
him anything but good luck with it? But it's clear that something
must have gone terribly wrong in the period when the highest income
was rolling in. Perhaps it was incompetence, or the punitive Big
Brother tax rates of the 1950s and 1960s, or perhaps it was simply
naivety and generosity.
In 1952, for example, Sonia donated the original manuscript of
Nineteen Eighty-Four to a charity auction, at which it fetched a
paltry £50. It was bought by a book dealer in the United States and
is now in private hands, and is worth - what? - I should guess three
or four thousand times as much. A few decisions like that and the
largest fortune quickly evaporates."
from:http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fopini
on%2F2002%2F05%2F21%2Fdo2102.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=39269
7
I have not read the Spurling book yet, but I will soon. (I think
people perhaps have been too hard on Sonia.)
ßonnie
"selene1022" <selen...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cfdb308.02070...@posting.google.com...
Alan Allport
news:xypU8.56355$vo2.3...@news2.telusplanet.net...
> "From George Orwell Productions - which, under the terms of his
> will, controlled the estate - she drew an initial widow's pension of
> £40 a month (well below her husband's poverty-line threshold, it
> might be noted), rising to £750 in the 1970s.
40 quid a month in 1950 was hardly anyone's poverty line. Where's the
supposed Orwellian threshold come from?
Alan.
Martha Bridegam
Alan Allport wrote:
Ignorant question: what were typical rent & grocery bills in 1950 pounds?
/MAB
John Rennie
"Alan Allport" <all...@ee.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:aft97h$bqs$1...@netnews.upenn.edu...
My Mother, Father and self survived on Dad's pension of £5 ten shillings a
week and mum still paid off a mortgage.
Bonnie
The Cost of Letters George Orwell
[Orwell's answers to a questionnaire 'The Cost of Letters' in
Horizon, September 1946, in which several writers were asked:
How much do think a writer needs to live on?
Do you think a serious writer can earn this sum by his writing, and
if so, how?
If not, what do you think is the most suitable second occupation for
him?
Do you think literature suffers from the diversion of a writer's
energy into other employments or is enriched by it?
Do you think the State or any other institution should do more for
writers?
Are you satisfied with your own solution of the problem and have you
any specific advice to give to young people who wish to earn their
living by writing?]
At the present purchasing value of money, I think £10 a week after
the payment of income tax is a minimum for a married man, and
perhaps £6 a week for an unmarried man. The best income for a
writer, I should say - again at the present value of money - is
about £1,000 a year. With that he can live in reasonable comfort,
free from duns and the necessity to do hack work, without having the
feeling that he has definitely moved into the privileged class. I do
not think one can with justice expect a writer to do his best on a
working-class income. His first necessity, just as indispensable to
him as are tools to a carpenter, is a comfortable, well-warmed room
where he can be sure of not being interrupted; and, although this
does not sound much, if one works out what it means in terms of
domestic arrangements, it implies fairly large earnings. A writer's
work is done at home, and if he lets it happen he will be subjected
to almost constant interruption. To be protected against
interruption always costs money, directly or indirectly. Then again,
writers need books and periodicals in great numbers, they need space
and furniture for filing papers, they spend a great deal on
correspondence, they need at any rate part-time secretarial help,
and most of them probably benefit by travelling, by living in what
they consider sympathetic surroundings, and by eating and drinking
the things they like best and by being able to take their friends
out to meals or have them to stay. It all costs money. Ideally I
would like to see every human being have the same income, provided
that it were a fairly high income: but so long as there is to be
differentiation, I think the writer's place is in the middle
bracket, which means, at present standards, round about £1,000 a
year.
No. I am told that at most a few hundred people in Great Britain
earn their living solely by writing books, and most of those are
probably writers of detective stories, etc. in a way it is easier
for people like Ethel M. Dell to avoid prostitution than it is for a
serious writer.
If it can be so arranged as not to take up the whole of his time, I
think a writer's second occupation should be something non-literary.
I suppose it would be better if it were also something congenial.
But I can just imagine, for instance, a bank clerk or an insurance
agent going home and doing serious work in his evenings; whereas the
effort is too much to make if one has already squandered one's
energies on semi-creative work such as teaching, broadcasting or
composing propaganda for bodies such as the British Council.
Provided one's whole time and energies are not used up, I think it
benefits. After all, one must make some sort of contact with the
ordinary world. Otherwise, what is one to write about?
The only thing the State could usefully do is to divert more of the
public money into buying books for the public libraries. If we are
to have full Socialism, then clearly the writer must be
State-supported, and ought to be placed among the better-paid
groups. But so long as we have an economy like the present one, in
which there is a great deal of State enterprise but also large areas
of private capitalism, then the less truck a writer has with the
State, or any other organized body, the better for him and his work.
There are invariably strings tied to any kind of organized
patronage, in which the writer is in effect the dependant of some
individual rich man, is obviously undesirable. By far the best and
least exacting patron is the big public. Unfortunately the British
public won't at present spend money on books, although it reads more
and more and its average of taste, I should say, has risen greatly
in the last twenty years. At present, I believe, the average British
citizen spends round about £1 a year on books, whereas he spends
getting on for £25 on tobacco and alcohol combined. Via the rates
and taxes he could easily be made to spend more without even knowing
it - as, during the war years, he spent far more than usual on
radio, owing to the subsidizing of the B.B.C. by the Treasury. If
the Government could be induced simply to earmark larger sums for
the purchase of books, without in the process taking over the whole
book trade and turning it into a propaganda machine, I think the
writer's position would be eased and literature might also benefit.
Personally I am satisfied, i.e. in a financial sense, because I have
been lucky, at any rate during the last few years. I had to struggle
desperately at the beginning, and if I had listened to what people
said to me I would never have been a writer. Even until quite
recently, whenever I have written anything which I took seriously,
there have been strenuous efforts, sometimes by quite influential
people, to keep it out of print. To a young writer who is conscious
of having something in him, the only advice I can give is not to
take advice. Financially, of course, there are tips I could give,
but even those are of no use unless one has some kind of talent. If
one simply wants to make a living by putting words on paper, then
the B.B.C., the film companies and the like are reasonably helpful.
But if one wants to be primarily a writer, then, in our society, one
is an animal that is tolerated but not encouraged - something rather
like a house sparrow - and one gets on better if one realizes one's
position from the start.
Horizon September 1946; Current British Thought No. 1, 1947
(Maybe not a poverty line income, but not anyone's idea of rich,
either.)
ßonnie
"Martha Bridegam" <brid...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:3D222BE7...@pacbell.net...
Alan Allport
> (Maybe not a poverty line income, but not anyone's idea of rich,
> either.)
Certainly. But a fair bit above average. Sonia was not living in high style,
but nor was she living in penury.
As for 1950 prices:
500g streaky bacon: 11d
500g beef (sirloin without bone / topside): 12d
250g cheddar cheese: 3d
500g margarine: 5d
250g butter (home produced): 6d
Half dozen eggs (size 2): 11d
125g loose tea: 5d
1 kg granulated sugar: 5d
800g white sliced bread: 2d
1 kg old potatoes: 1d
1 pint pasteurised milk: 2d
Alan.
John Rennie
240p to the pound.
Martha Bridegam
John Rennie wrote:
> "Alan Allport" <all...@ee.upenn.edu> wrote in message
> news:aftbe4$qkg$1...@netnews.upenn.edu...
> > "Bonnie" <Bon...@telus.net> wrote in message
> > news:t8qU8.56584$vo2.3...@news2.telusplanet.net...
> >
> > > (Maybe not a poverty line income, but not anyone's idea of rich,
> > > either.)
> >
> > Certainly. But a fair bit above average. Sonia was not living in high
> style,
> > but nor was she living in penury.
> >
> > As for 1950 prices:
> >.....
> >
> > 1 kg old potatoes: 1d
> >
> >
> >
> > 1 pint pasteurised milk: 2d
> >
> > Alan.
> >
> >
>
> 240p to the pound.
Thx. What about rents?
/MAB
selene1022
> This bit of info might change your mind about Sonia Orwell:
>
> "From George Orwell Productions - which, under the terms of his
> will, controlled the estate - she drew an initial widow's pension of
> £40 a month (well below her husband's poverty-line threshold, it
> might be noted), rising to £750 in the 1970s. The accountant who ran
> the company reported that her share of its assets in 1977 was worth
> about £75,000.
I would imagine that the income from copyrights would have gone up
dramaticly after 1950 when all the American editions (ie Shooting an
Elephant) started coming out. I think you make a good point about the
tax system (in the States it was around 90% in the highest
bracket--Republicans like to remind Democrats that one of the main
reasons JFK was elected was because he promised to lower the income
tax...and he did.)
>
> But apparently she never received even that, initiating a law suit
> against the accountant to recover the copyrights - a battle she
> finally won in an out-of-court settlement only a fortnight before
> her death. The copyrights she then bequeathed to Orwell's adopted
> son, Richard Blair, who, according to the Orwell expert Michael
> Sheldon, "was living modestly on his salary as an employee of a
> company that manufactured agricultural equipment".
Why did she not receive them? Do you know the details of Orwell's
will? It sounds really fishy.
>
> A writer's estate now remains in copyright for 75 years after death,
> so Mr Blair has another 23 years of income to enjoy. Who would wish
> him anything but good luck with it? But it's clear that something
> must have gone terribly wrong in the period when the highest income
> was rolling in. Perhaps it was incompetence, or the punitive Big
> Brother tax rates of the 1950s and 1960s, or perhaps it was simply
> naivety and generosity.
Was it Sonia's idea to leave the copyrights to Richard, or, again, was
it a part of GO's original will?
>
> In 1952, for example, Sonia donated the original manuscript of
> Nineteen Eighty-Four to a charity auction, at which it fetched a
> paltry £50.
That blows my mind. There's almost something pathological to it (or
maybe I'm just being sentimental) She was a "literary woman" certainly
she must have know its worth.
>
> I have not read the Spurling book yet, but I will soon. (I think
> people perhaps have been too hard on Sonia.)
I think people have been hard on her as well, and I don't really trust
what Crick has to say (he has a personal axe to grind) or LaPlante (or
whatever the "Difficult Women" guy's name is...I've got it somewhere
in the shelf), who may have slanted her towards his book title.
I'd like to buy Spurling's bio, but I've admitted myself to book
buyers anonymous 'til I read the yard high stack I've already got. I
hope you'll tell us about it when you finish. Don't know though,
something about Sonia doesn't jive with me. Maybe it's because "the
widow Orwell" gets so much attention, and Eileen, a woman who was so
much more important in terms of her contribution to Orwell's life and
work is all but ignored.
JV
>
Martha Bridegam
selene1022 wrote:
> "Bonnie" <Bon...@telus.net> wrote in message news:<xypU8.56355$vo2.3...@news2.telusplanet.net>...
> > This bit of info might change your mind about Sonia Orwell:
> >
> > "From George Orwell Productions - which, under the terms of his
> > will, controlled the estate - she drew an initial widow's pension of
> > £40 a month (well below her husband's poverty-line threshold, it
> > might be noted), rising to £750 in the 1970s. The accountant who ran
> > the company reported that her share of its assets in 1977 was worth
> > about £75,000.
>
> I would imagine that the income from copyrights would have gone up
> dramaticly after 1950 when all the American editions (ie Shooting an
> Elephant) started coming out.
The big jump would have been when *1984* became a Book Of The Month Club title, right?
> I think you make a good point about the
> tax system (in the States it was around 90% in the highest
> bracket--Republicans like to remind Democrats that one of the main
> reasons JFK was elected was because he promised to lower the income
> tax...and he did.)
eggggh.
> ...Don't know though,
> something about Sonia doesn't jive with me. Maybe it's because "the
> widow Orwell" gets so much attention, and Eileen, a woman who was so
> much more important in terms of her contribution to Orwell's life and
> work is all but ignored.
Yes. She also seems to have been more of an intellectual, and a better writer.
/MAB
selene1022
> selene1022 wrote:
>
> > "Bonnie" <Bon...@telus.net> wrote in message news:<xypU8.56355$vo2.3...@news2.telusplanet.net>...
> > > This bit of info might change your mind about Sonia Orwell:
> > >
> > > "From George Orwell Productions - which, under the terms of his
> > > will, controlled the estate - she drew an initial widow's pension of
> > > £40 a month (well below her husband's poverty-line threshold, it
> > > might be noted), rising to £750 in the 1970s. The accountant who ran
> > > the company reported that her share of its assets in 1977 was worth
> > > about £75,000.
> >
> > I would imagine that the income from copyrights would have gone up
> > dramaticly after 1950 when all the American editions (ie Shooting an
> > Elephant) started coming out.
>
> The big jump would have been when *1984* became a Book Of The Month Club title, right?
Yep, but would imagine it would have taken a while for everything to
filter through the system. By the way, I have a book of the month
edition, complete with dust cover--and it has a Tennessee connection.
It was published in Kingsport.
>
> > I think you make a good point about the
> > tax system (in the States it was around 90% in the highest
> > bracket--Republicans like to remind Democrats that one of the main
> > reasons JFK was elected was because he promised to lower the income
> > tax...and he did.)
>
> eggggh.
Yeah M., but don't forget, the dems like to counter that the 90% was
under IKE.
>
> > ...Don't know though,
> > something about Sonia doesn't jive with me. Maybe it's because "the
> > widow Orwell" gets so much attention, and Eileen, a woman who was so
> > much more important in terms of her contribution to Orwell's life and
> > work is all but ignored.
>
> Yes. She also seems to have been more of an intellectual, and a better writer.
>
> /MAB
Exactly. And where are all the bios etc. featuring Eileen? Guess she's
just not a "sexy" topic. No juicy gossip about literary gang bangs
etc. And I still can't get over Richard. If I spent my life living off
the name and money of a man I was only married to for three months,
I'd make damn sure that I supported, and had a relationship with his
only son--but that might be my retro middle-class values shining
through. I wonder how Spruling treats Sonia's relationship with
Richard...something tells me she blames Avril for the "estrangement."
JV
Paul Sebastianelli
Even more eggggh. Nothing symbolizes better what is wrong
with party politics these days (and maybe always, yes) than
the two major American parties finger-pointing about who raised
and lowered taxes 40+ years ago. Who friggin cares? It really
reveals the emptiness of their thinking.
paul.
Bonnie
Yes I agree about Eileen. I would find a bio on her very
interesting. (BTW when I first read a bio on Orwell - of whom I knew
nothing at the time except what's in his books - I was taken by
surprise at the sudden death of Eileen - I didn't see it coming).
Crick writes about Lettice Cooper's novel "Black Bethlehem" which
describes life in a wartime Ministry and the character 'Ann' is
clearly based on Eileen, he says. Here is a bit from that novel, as
you have probably seen in Crick already:
"When you speak to her she generally looks at you for a minute
before answering, and then answers very slowly, as though anything
you said to her needed careful consideration and was of the greatest
importance. At first we thought her affected, and were impatient of
waiting for her comments. Later we realized that everything was
important to her because her sense of life was so intense that she
got the full impact of anything that turned up and saw it not
isolated but with all its connections. I find it very difficult to
put down what I mean about this, but I think that most people skin
over most things. They only really get the impact of certain things
that are especially interesting to them. Perhaps they have to be
like that to get through the day. She does her work very well, but
she almost always stays late to finish it. She goes home at night
without meat or vegetables which she meant to buy in her lunch hour,
but had not bought because she had not finished what she was saying
at lunch. In the flat when she cooks and cleans for her brilliant,
erratic husband and their friends, she is generally washing up at
midnight."
Would that everyone had a friend like Eileen.
ßonnie
Martha Bridegam
Bonnie wrote:
> ... <snip good thoughts>...
>
> Would that everyone had a friend like Eileen.
> ßonnie
I don't think I ever posted her final letter, which was to her husband.
(Sorry, no clue who Harvey Evers is, unless he's the doctor. Gwen would
likely be her sister-in-law Gwen O'Shaughnessy, widow of Eileen's doctor
brother Laurence who was killed at Dunkirk):
29 March 1945
Fernwood House
Clayton Road
Newcastle-on-Tyne
Dearest I'm just going to have the operation, already enema'd, injected
(with morphia in the *right* arm which is a nuisance), cleaned & packed
up like a precious image in cotton wool & bandages. When its' [sic] over
I'll add a note to this & it can get off quickly. Judging by my fellow
patients it will be a *short* note. They've all had their operations.
Annoying -- I shall never have a chance to feel superior.
I haven't seen Harvey Evers since arrival & apparently Gwen didn't
communicate with him & no one knows what operation I am having! They
don't believe that Harvey Evers really left it to me to decide -- he
always 'does what he thinks best'! He will of course. But I must say I
feel irritated though I am being a *model* patient. They think I'm
wonderful, so placid & happy they say. As indeed I am once I can hand
myself over to someone else to deal with.
This is a nice room -- ground floor so one can see the garden. Not much
in it except daffodils & I think arabis but a nice little lawn. My bed
isn't next the window but it faces the right way. I also see the fire &
the clock.
. . .
Davison's note:
"The letter ends here. No note was added. Eileen suffered a heart attack
and died under the anaesthetic. She was thirty-nine. Orwell was in Paris
when he received the news that Eileen had died...; he got to Greystone
on Saturday, 31 March. Eileen was buried in St Andrew's and Jesmond
Cemetery, Newcastle upon Tyne... The grave is number 145 in Section B.
Orwell took Richard back with him to London, and Doreen Kopp took care
of the child when Orwell returned to France..."
c/o MAB
Tom Deveson
>Yes I agree about Eileen. I would find a bio on her very
>interesting.
If you add together the key details when Eileen first appears in
Shelden's life of GO, you have an intriguing and attractive portrait:
Tyneside-Irish by birth and upbringing, winning scholarships to grammar
school and Oxford, studying English literature there before changing to
work in a rigorous and more scientific discipline in London, 'untiring
in her efforts to help other people', mischievous sense of humour, 'one
of the most intelligent women he would ever meet', 'could hold her own
with him in discussions about poetry or fiction', felt free to speak her
mind...
It's also, apart from generational differences, a portrait of my wife.
Such women offered thoughtful and serious challenges to many of the
presumptions -- political, cultural, personal -- to be found among men
brought up in traditional/Establishment ways who took over what Queenie
Leavis called 'the literary preserves...kept exclusively for their
friends.'
It was so in the 1960s/1970s, and must have been even more so in the
1930s. No wonder Orwell wanted to marry her as soon as he'd met her.
Tom (soon celebrating our 31st anniversary)
--
Tom Deveson
Tom Deveson
>1 kg old potatoes: 1d
>> 1 pint pasteurised milk: 2d
>>240p to the pound.
240d, John. Our currency abbreviations were still in Latin.
"Ah yes, I remember it well."
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Gene Zitver
>Tyneside-Irish by birth and upbringing, winning scholarships to grammar
>school and Oxford, studying English literature there before changing to
>work in a rigorous and more scientific discipline in London, 'untiring
>in her efforts to help other people', mischievous sense of humour, 'one
>of the most intelligent women he would ever meet', 'could hold her own
>with him in discussions about poetry or fiction', felt free to speak her
>mind...
>
>It's also, apart from generational differences, a portrait of my wife.
>
>Such women offered thoughtful and serious challenges to many of the
>presumptions -- political, cultural, personal -- to be found among men
>brought up in traditional/Establishment ways who took over what Queenie
>Leavis called 'the literary preserves...kept exclusively for their
>friends.'
>
>It was so in the 1960s/1970s, and must have been even more so in the
>1930s. No wonder Orwell wanted to marry her as soon as he'd met her.
>
>Tom (soon celebrating our 31st anniversary)
Having been fortunate enough to meet Tom and Moira a couple of years ago, I can
affirm that she is indeed someone very special. Some guys have all the luck.
Happy anniversary to you both.
Gene
Tom Deveson
>Having been fortunate enough to meet Tom and Moira a couple of years ago, I can
>affirm that she is indeed someone very special. Some guys have all the luck.
>
>Happy anniversary to you both.
Gene, thank you very much. You're most kind. I promise there'll be no
thumb print in the butter next time *you* come to South London.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Bonnie
writes:
"When his first wife, Eileen, aged 39, died while he was abroad just
after the German surrender, he ought, one feels, to have taken it as
a warning signal to himself: what was the cause of her unexplained
"poor health"? He does not seem to have wondered. "When Eileen and I
were first married," he had written a few years earlier to his
friend, Jack Common, ". we hardly knew where the next meal was
coming from but we found we could rub along in a remarkable manner
with spuds and so forth." More than once he speaks of how women of
the working class age early in comparison to middle-class women, and
it sounds as though Eileen O'Shaughnessy, a doctor's daughter, had
embraced a working-class fate in marrying Eric Blair. "Yes, she was
a good old stick," he said after her death to a friend who was
expressing sympathy."
I wonder if this is true.
ßonnie
"Tom Deveson" <a...@devesons.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4vRnuFBLG$I9E...@devesons.demon.co.uk...
John Rennie
> In a piece written for The New York Review of Books, Mary McCarthy
> writes:
>
> "When his first wife, Eileen, aged 39, died while he was abroad just
> after the German surrender, he ought, one feels, to have taken it as
> a warning signal to himself: what was the cause of her unexplained
> "poor health"? He does not seem to have wondered. "When Eileen and I
> were first married," he had written a few years earlier to his
> friend, Jack Common, ". we hardly knew where the next meal was
> coming from but we found we could rub along in a remarkable manner
> with spuds and so forth." More than once he speaks of how women of
> the working class age early in comparison to middle-class women, and
> it sounds as though Eileen O'Shaughnessy, a doctor's daughter, had
> embraced a working-class fate in marrying Eric Blair. "Yes, she was
> a good old stick," he said after her death to a friend who was
> expressing sympathy."
>
> I wonder if this is true.
> ßonnie
Why shouldn't it be true? For Orwell's generation his remark was
typical and has nothing to do with his real feelings. It was just
'not done' to reveal those. (Please, Bonnie, don't top post.
>
> "Tom Deveson" <a...@devesons.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:4vRnuFBLG$I9E...@devesons.demoneelings. .co.uk...
Rowland McDonnell
750 quid a month in the late 1970s was hardly poverty living, either.
I'm pretty sure my parents' income was around that level back then -
with three sons, two cars, and a mortgage to support.
Henry
> 750 quid a month in the late 1970s was hardly poverty living, either.
> I'm pretty sure my parents' income was around that level back then -
> with three sons, two cars, and a mortgage to support.
Two cars?!? Luxury!! We had one rollerskate, when we could climb out
'pit.
cheers,
Henry
Rowland McDonnell
> Rowland McDonnell <real-addr...@flur.bltigibbet> wrote:
>
> > 750 quid a month in the late 1970s was hardly poverty living, either.
> > I'm pretty sure my parents' income was around that level back then -
> > with three sons, two cars, and a mortgage to support.
>
> Two cars?!? Luxury!!
<chuckle> So one might think - until meeting the cars concerned and
finding out about the use they were put to. Nah, two cars were almost
essential and if there's any luxury involved in a succession of VW
Beetles and variously shagged smaller cars (*original* Mini (and I mean
the original original model), Ami 8, Renault 4, etc) I'd like to know
about it. I grew up thinking it was normal to have carbs in the
kitchen.
> We had one rollerskate, when we could climb out
> 'pit.
A rollerskate might have been better than the Renault 4 - the only
production car in the world to have been fitted with carrying handles
(you think I jest? Look at the front of one some day, if there are any
still left on the roads.)