A Journey Back in Time to a Summer Job That Helped Fund My Holiday.

When I was a young boy, my mother set me a challenge. It was during the long school holiday one year, and she was hoping to keep me busy and out of her way.

The challenge was that if I did a certain amount of housework and errands over the following seven days, I would be rewarded with ten shillings.

Ten shillings was a lot of money back then, in the early 1970s. It was equal to fifty pence today, but it bought you a lot more. 

For a young boy, it was a big deal, and I would either be paid in coins or a “ten bob” banknote.

I liked the banknote, mainly because I had never been given one up to that point in my life. 

Even though I did not like the idea of doing housework, I accepted the challenge. After all, it was money.

The work I had to do, and all the errands I had to run, for those seven days was tough.

While my schoolmates were outside playing football or cricket, I was at home cleaning the ground floor windows, both inside and out.

“What about the windows upstairs?” I asked.

“What? You are climbing a ladder. Do you want to die?” My mother replied.

The upstairs windows had to wait for the local window cleaner. That was probably a good decision. 

I tidied the backyard, which mainly involved removing all weeds that somehow manage to grow between the paving stones. It is only when you do that job that you realise just how many paving stones there are — a lot.

That took the best part of a day to do.

I cleaned the kitchen. Fortunately, it was a small kitchen, but it was a morning’s work.

And I ran errands to the shops, like the local off-licence, to take the empty bottles back. They would pay a halfpenny for every bottle returned. I was hoping that the pennies would be given to me, but I was under a contract — a week of work for “ten bob”.

That was the deal.

I must have walked twenty miles going to the local shops that week. I cursed the puncture on my bicycle.

But once I got that “ten bob”, I could afford to buy a puncture repair kit.

At the end of the week, I asked for my pay. I had seen something at the local toy shop.

The puncture repair would have to wait.

As my mother handed me the crisp banknote, I remember what she said.

“Why don’t you save it for a rainy day? The toyshop isn’t going anywhere.”

In the end, I saved the money. It went towards my holiday fund.

It was probably spent, and lost, on the slot machines and bingo by the seaside. And that summer, I recall that there were quite a few rainy days on that holiday.

So, in one way, I did save it for a rainy day.

But my mother was wrong about the toyshop. It didn’t survive. It is now a block of flats.