Follow-up

I WELL remember my first pay packet (Peterborough). Leaving school at 14 in 1939, I was apprenticed as a sheet metal worker to local bus builder Eastern Coach Works of Lowestoft in Suffolk. The working week of 48 hours was spread over five days and Saturday morning. My hourly wage was just one penny and three farthings, giving me a weekly total of seven shillings. After stoppages, my take-home total was six shillings, equivalent to 60p today. Proudly handing over my pay packet to mother, she kept five shillings and gave me one shilling as my weekly pocket money. It was worth more in those days and I could treat myself to a cinema visit and an interval ice cream. Apprenticeships at the coach works were for seven years (age 14 to 21) and, on completion, the skilled wage was one shilling and eight pence an hour. There was no alternative employment for coach builders in the area as Lowestoft was a fishing port, so people tended to stay in the job.

Alan Southam, Quorn, Leics.