Last updated 20:14, Thursday, 06 November 2008

SHE WAS an old lady, obviously a pensioner, and she hadn’t much in her trolley – only a few food essentials, mostly knockdowns and special offers – but as she handed them to the young girl on the checkout I could sense a quiet panic gripping her as, open purse in hand, she realised she didn’t have enough to pay for her purchases.

So what to do? What to put back? What went back were a bag of sweets and a packet of chocolate biscuits – the few luxuries she’d allowed herself that week.

Keep your eyes open when next you’re in a supermarket; you might see this scenario repeated because more people, and not all of them pensioners, are on the breadline. In 2008 people are counting the pennies.

And it’s probably going to get worse. Have you seen your utility bills lately?

If you believe the papers, many older people will be faced with a choice between heating and eating.

But when it comes to clothes, there’s always the charity shop.

They didn’t have charity shops back in the thirties. But they did have the grab carts.

One such cart visited towns and villages in West Cumberland. It was run, as one informant remembered, by a Mrs Berry, who came from Carlisle.

I understand that it carried an assortment of wares, old clothes, shoes and rags.

No fancy prices, all items cost only pennies. If you were lucky you could have acquired garments which, after washing, you could wear.

But I get the impression that most purchases were cut up and restyled.

I suppose today we would call it recycling.

Over the years I’ve been told about the many ingenious things that could be done with discarded men’s shirts – especially turning them into pinnies and aprons.

Any leftover old clothes could always be cut into strips and used to make rag mats.

And here I’m asking you to help fill in the blanks.

Anyone remember the grab cart and know anything about its owner?

Nowadays we give, in cash or kind, to charities which work in the Third World.

Back in the 1930s, charitable individuals did the same – but with a difference.

The goods collected were destined for deprived areas in this country, like West Cumbria.

In the winter of 1933 some “1,912 garments – excluding wool, rolls of material, bedding, curtains, etc” were sent by the Cumberland branch of the Personal Service League to the three Broughtons in West Cumberland.

There was, according to Lady Mabel Howard, Greystoke Castle, then branch president, great need for this help. She pointed this out in a talk she gave in 1934. What she said is a stark reminder of how miserable life could be in those dark days.

I quote: “All through the summer I have received letters telling me of men who were confined to the house because they had no clothes, of a man who needed an operation but had no clothes to go in, of children scantily clad sleeping between newspapers because they had no bedding.”

I have asked before if anyone actually knows of someone who, as a child, was sewn in for winter.

I’ve read about the practice, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who had this happen to them. I’ve also never met anyone who kept warm during cold winters by wearing layers of newspaper, held together by smears of lard or margarine, under their shirts. But I’m still hoping!

And what about the Personal Service League, an organisation I know absolutely nothing about. But, hopefully you do.

I want to end on a different topic – farming. I often catch one of the early morning farming programmes on the radio. I don’t know why, because most of the coverage is doom and gloom.

But then when did you last meet a happy farmer?

It seems that they can’t get enough people to work on the farms, especially for time-critical activities like gathering potatoes.

Back in 1948 it seems that this was not a problem in Cumberland.

They used schoolchildren, who gathered 6,000 acres of potatoes.

The local branch of the NFU was hoping that the Cumberland Agricultural Executive Committee would get together with local education authorities to repeat this effort in 1949.

So, was the work done in school time? Did the kids get paid? And when did this “arrangement” end?

Back to the 1930s – and the present credit crunch. Nothing much changes. The filthy rich get bailouts – the poor get handouts.