All that money can buy

...but how I wish I didn’t have to beg my husband for it!

in these days of ‘equality’ for women, i wonder how many there are like me, who feel more like slaves because they have to ask their husbands for every penny they spend.

My husband is the managing director of a family business. i am paid weekly in cash, to clothe and feed five of us.

if, as happened this week, my husband is ill and doesn’t go to the bank, i have the humiliation of telling the milkman and other tradesmen that i have no money when they call.

i just cannot make my husband see i need a cheque book, and after 18 years of frustration i am at screaming point.

Mrs M.G., Swindon, Wilts. SCHOOL MEALS is your child eligible for free school meals? Mine are, like at least half a million others.

yet i know that in lots of families these children are turning their backs on what amounts to five good, well-balanced meals a week — and a saving of 8s. 9d. a week per child, which is to go up to 12s. in April.

My two eldest are both at secondary school, and neither will take the free meals, and not because the food’s nasty.

i think the fault lies with the manner in which the ‘free dinner children’ are singled out, in class, by being asked: ‘hands up all children who are allowed free dinners,’ at the beginning of term and at other times.

As long as the children of lowincome families have to admit their circumstances, many of them will prefer to go without free dinners — and the social stigma that goes with them.

Mrs Diana Kareh, Thaxted, Essex. VULGAR HUSBAND WhAt can i do about my husband’s vulgarity? When we married five years ago he was always eager to please me, and we shared a very happy and romantic relationship.

now he seems to think i should enjoy the coarse words and phrases he uses, but they make me wonder if familiarity has made him lose any of the regard he once had for me. i admit i was brought up in a rather strict household. But i don’t think i’m more modest than the average woman, and i resent him treating our lovemaking as a dirty joke.

i can accept a deterioration in table manners. But the exchange of romance for a sordid brand of low comedy is unbearable.

(Mrs) L.D., London. S.W. HOSPITAL WARDS i WAs recently a patient in a gynaecological ward for two weeks, and i was greatly perturbed by the mixing of two types of patient. the first group included women who desperately wanted a child. they were often in beds next to girls who had had abortions.

As a Gp’s wife, i realise abortions done under the health service are all necessary and not lightly undertaken. But i feel they should be nursed separately.

Mrs Daphne Campbell, Aylesbury, Bucks.