Weekend jobs for cash
We took on all sorts of jobs to earn some spending money, says Yours writer Marion Clarke
If there is one thing we never forget about our weekend jobs, it’s exactly how much we were paid! I worked as a waitress at a posh hotel for two shillings an hour… until
I learned that the greasy spoon café in the high street paid two and six an hour. I moved in a flash!
Jill Hassall earned good money for her musical skills: “I was a parttime pianist for a ballet school. I was paid 25 shillings for five hours’ work, compared with the 15 shillings my friends earned for eight hours at Woolworths.”
Aged just ten, Jennie Carney took on a grown-up job: “My mum was a single parent and there was
‘My first day doing a paper round was a disaster. I got all the papers muddled…’
not much cash to spare for pocket money. She worked in a pub in Soho, so every Saturday morning I went there with her to do the ironing for all the staff. I received 15 shillings, which I spent on clothes.”
I wonder if one of the shops Jennie favoured was Chelsea Girl, where Marie Skinner used to work? “There were three full-time staff and an older manageress, a formidable lady who was always immaculately dressed. When she was away sick or on holiday, we had such fun – trying on clothes we liked and taking longer lunch breaks than was the rule. “But someone must have snitched on us because when she came back, she told us off and, looking at me, said, ‘No-one is indispensable, Miss Riding’.”
Vicki Watson was in the right place to spend her hard-earned cash: “In 1967 when I was 15, I had my perfect
Saturday job in the record department of Boots in Nottingham. I started on the same day that Radio 1 began broadcasting. I was into music and knew all the groups of that era. I enjoyed every minute and spent my pay (£2 10s) on records.” Films were Tom Bull’s passion and he took on a variety of jobs so that he could see two or three a week: “I gathered firewood and carried bags of coke from the gasworks for neighbours. When I was 12 I delivered the Sunday newspapers and also sold them from a stand. Later, I delivered fruit and veg on my bicycle for the local greengrocer. I was paid 1s 6d, which enabled me to take my childhood sweetheart to the cinema and she has now been my wife for 62 years!” Maureen Woodrow confesses: “My first day doing a paper round was a complete disaster. “I dropped the bag, got the papers muddled, so that many irate customers complained. Then the money I collected was short, so I had to forfeit most of my wages to make it up to the right amount!”
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