Life entries from the 1970s

Gran Collins counted her change before she left the counter.

We went to Hayling Island for a week in the summer of 1971 and stayed in a caravan. It was not our first caravan holiday, but it is the first one I remember in enough detail to separate it from the others.

Decimal Day was Monday, 15 February 1971. I was eight and had been told that money was changing, although the pound was staying the same. This seemed an unnecessary way to organise it.

We went to Weymouth in August 1972 and stayed in a boarding house near the seafront. The week was wet often enough for the rain to become part of the daily planning, though not enough for Dad to admit the holiday had been affected.

By 1976, Denise and I spent some Saturday mornings looking at records. Looking was free. Buying required several weeks of not spending money on anything else.

I have left school.

I received my first pay packet on Friday, 31 August 1979, after four weeks at Wessex Marine Supplies.