Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [10]
Those two episodes are really happy memories for me. They might seem a bit weird now, but as a kid I loved doing crazy things like that. Life was never dull with Mum. Every day was a bit of an adventure, which I absolutely adored. She was obviously inventive and a hard worker. If only she could have channelled her ideas. She had so much to offer.
As soon as Mum had a bit of cash in her pocket she was desperate to spend it. Not on things for herself – usually it was treats for both of us. My favourite thing we did regularly was eat out together. With money being scarce, we’re not talking about the Ritz. But whenever Mum had a pound or two in her pocket we’d walk to a café on the corner of Preston Park and I would be allowed to have toast with margarine on it. That’s how I know how poor we were – because two bits of lovely, thick, white, toasted bread coated in marge was a real treat for me. I can’t remember having much in the way of cooked food at home at all. I certainly don’t recall Mum ever standing at a stove. Food just didn’t seem to be a priority for her. We had occasional tinned food – cold – but mainly packets of biscuits, cakes, bread, anything convenient. Mushka had dry biscuits, but otherwise was left to forage. I remember Granny offering me a choice of cereals one day at her house. I was staggered. I’d never had cereal at home. Having these little sugar-coated parcels to start the day was like a naughty treat.
Mum’s finances usually stretched to a round of toast once or twice a week. Very, very occasionally, I was allowed to look even further down the menu and have a sausage sandwich. That was an amazing meal for me. Two sausages cut in half and wrapped between slices of that same thick, white loaf was my idea of heaven. Being there with Mum, tucking into my 15p sarnie, I really couldn’t have been happier.
It’s only later, of course, that I associated it with the time we were at our poorest. As a child, I never made the link. I just thought it was a lovely way to spend time with my mother.
It was the same with the money-making scams. I never saw them as essential, so we could eat for the next few days. They just felt like an adventure to me, a bit of fun, with the added bonus of hopefully finding some cash. It was no wonder, then, that I hit upon my own wheeze to pick up a few pence here and there.
My favourite trick was to stand outside one of the big red phone boxes we used to have then and try to look distressed. Then I’d say to passers-by, ‘Can you help? I really need to phone my mother and I haven’t got any money.’
A local call in those days was 2p. A few people would ignore me and some would tell me to clear off, but often they dipped their hands into their pockets and handed over a nice brown coin. Of course, there was no way I was going to use the money on a phone call. For a start, Mum didn’t even have a phone. I couldn’t have called her if I’d wanted to.
No, as soon as I had a coin in my possession, I would dart into a shop and buy sweets. You could get an awful lot of sugar for 2p, so I’d be straight out to find my friends to share my good fortune. It wasn’t just this entrepreneurial spirit that I inherited from Mum: I also realized that there’s no point in having money, however much or little, if you don’t share it with your loved ones. Two wonderful lessons.
Being a kid, though, I didn’t always care how I achieved those targets. I remember buying all the kids on our street an ice cream once. That’s typical Mum generosity coming out there. The only problem was, I hadn’t tricked passers-by