In Praise Of The Old Folks
Who lived in the house that I passed by today
A life that is over is clear from the way
The jumble of goods lie discarded forlorn
All part of a home that was cosy and warm
The young cannot wait to be done with the task
So that they may dispatch the old times to the past
A thoughtless disdain for the life that has gone
Possessions once cherished are finished and done
But it comes to them all as the time marches by
For they can’t take it with them the day that they die
I wrote this in 2017 having passed by a house where an elderly lady had lived, whom I had spoken to very occasionally in passing, if I had seen her outside.
Recent events make it acutely obvious that respect for age has diminished to such a point that governments are beginning to target the elderly in a quite specific and damaging way. Once it was accepted that because the State pension was low compared to the salaries that might once have been earned, taxation relief on pensions was a given. Personal Allowance, on earnings before tax, used to rise each year (for all people in receipt of income) in line with inflation and pay rises. For the elderly, there was an extra personal allowance applied once they reached a certain age. Thus, if they had been prudent and been fortunate enough to earn sufficient to do so, any extra private pension to which they might have contributed, was not usually enough to attract taxation.
By degrees and by stealth, (including freezing personal allowance for all) any extra allowances for pensioners has been whittled away. Now, it is common for pensioners with quite modest incomes (ie less than £20,000 per annum) to be paying income tax.
Latterly, governments have cynically and shamelessly used the “ageing population” as a shield to cover their own deliberate profligacy in their handling of the Country’s financial affairs. In the not-too-distant past, the elderly were valued for their contributions to society, for their accumulated knowledge, experience and wisdom. Now they are routinely denigrated by mainstream reporting and blamed for their prudence during the course of their lives. They are deemed to have benefitted unduly from having bought a property or having paid into any extra workplace pension. Regardless of the fact that every pay packet they had earned in their working lives had been reduced by taxation and national insurance (supposedly to pay for their retirement pension in later life).
Better living standards have raised the survival years quite substantially, meaning that “pensions” are payable for longer than was used to be the norm. This is now supposedly “leeching” the public purse to the detriment of those who are now having to work and pay taxes to support the old! Governments have deliberately allowed an atmosphere of envy and resentment to build up against the older generation to hide their own mishandling of public funds Not the least of which is their own personal depredations upon the taxpayer for their own and public servants’ inflated salaries and expenses!
The advent of The Consumer Society engendered a feeling that by not keeping up with the fashion for owning the latest goods and taking foreign holidays, one was in some way personally diminished. The manipulation of people by the “big corporates” has caused untold damage to societal cohesion. Corporations have become rich and have “enslaved” a permanently discontented and “must have” client base!
In my own youth, the Consumer Society did not exist. There were no “smart” phones. Indeed, mobile telephones had not been invented. One even had to wait for a considerable time to be able to rent a landline! Often, these were “party lines” shared with another subscriber because space in the local exchanges was so limited. Those party lines lead to many an argument between the subscribers over “line hogging”!
In my parents’ household, every penny was spoken for. I remember a long tin box with slots in the top above each section, labelled with the headings of all the costs that were to be paid. From rent, to gas, electricity (paid for by slot meter), rates, coal, clothing allowance (usually spent on the children’s shoes!). My Mother also invested in a local “shoe club” each week. Every so often it became her “turn” to receive the contents of the kitty. She always insisted on us having proper “Clarkes” shoes where our feet were x-rayed and measured to ensure a good fit. Even in those days, Children’s shoes were expensive.
New clothes were an occasional luxury. Often, they constituted birthday or Christmas presents. Making and mending were terms well known to us! I longed for a sun-dress at age 7, such as some of my school friends had. My Mother set to and cut out a pattern. Sadly, due to her being busy elsewhere, it was never stitched together! Knitting was de rigeur. Wool was often re-used after a garment became too small or the wool was needed elsewhere. Then it was unravelled, formed into hanks (which is where we children came in. Having to hold out our outstretched arms so that the unravelled wool could be draped over) and then washed to remove the “kinks” left by previous knitting.
My grandmother knew all about “making ends meet”. Every jam jar and every butter paper was rigorously scraped clean. Jars were washed and reused every year for jam and pickle making. The outdoor privy was adorned with a string of newspaper squares through which a hole was made in each piece and threaded through the string. That was toilet paper. To be honest, I am amazed that the drains didn’t clog up! There was no “washing up liquid”. We used soda and very hot water - boiled in a kettle! Washing up was done in very strict order so as to not be washing crockery or cutlery in water made grubby by the contents of cooking pots.
By the time I was 15, transistor radios were available and record players (not the old wind-up ones but smart electric versions and smaller 45 and LP records), longed for but out of reach financially, I had to wait until I started work to afford such a luxury. With my very first salary, I opened a bank account, received a cheque book and wrote a cheque for my pride and joy, a transistor radio of minuscule proportions compared to the monster valve radio we had had at home.
Later when I was renting my first bedsit, I spent a shocking amount of money (it seemed to me) on a refrigerator! In old times much further back, people did not routinely inherit property or wealth. It simply did not exist. If there was an inheritance of any kind it usually took the form of everyday goods that today would be discarded (as I describe in my poem above).
Reading old wills is very informative. In a multiple child family, one might receive the bed of their parents. Another might inherit any crockery that had been in daily use. Books were highly valued possessions should any family have been fortunate enough to own any.
I have upon my bookshelves (carefully preserved from heat and damp) a copy of Pilgrims Progress dated 1760. It is obvious that it spent its life tucked away in a niche near the fireplace. The once leather binding is dried and fragile. The pages are brown with age. But that book tells a poignant story of a family. Paper for writing was obviously not available. Neither did they possess a family bible. So this book has been the record of births, deaths and marriage throughout the family. It has also been used as “writing practice” at various times. Some in the marvellous copperplate common to the period. I have gone through each page and made notes of everything written in the book. It is too fragile now to leaf through it very often. But the first writing inside the front cover gives a foretaste of the entries to come. (Some of which are indicative of unexplained puzzles!)
“Sarah Evans born December 15 1743
Edward Evans and Sarah was maried November 2 1762 (sic)
Thomas Evans was born June 17 1763
Betty Evans was born July 6 1765”
Those few entries show that the book was in use in place of a family bible. The whole book is a wonderful record of the family and their religious principles. One page has been inscribed several times with the phrase “commit no sin”. As though someone was made to write “lines” as a punishment for some misdoing! I have endeavoured to represent the case that the older generations have a lot to offer a society that presently seems determined to categorise them as “useless eaters”. The old have traditionally, been the purveyors of useful information, history and wisdom. The old are our past, our present and the key to our future! Without them, there is a void that unscrupulous governments are only too happy to fill with chaos and confusion!
Frederica