Remembering Grandma’s Two-Sheet Solution

As I look forward to my first state pension payment landing in my bank account tomorrow, I’m thinking about the wise advice about financial economy that I received from my grandma when my grandpa was about to retire. 

Grandma, born in 1900, had what we’d now call a stay-at-home mum to her three children, and a wonderful wife to my hardworking Grandpa, who commuted to London every day from their dear little 1930s terraced house in Sidcup in the London Borough of Bexley. I was privileged as a child at Days Lane Primary School to be able to visit Grandma every day during the school dinner hour, as she lived within walking distance of my primary school.

Different Times

The school day was longer then that it is now, because we had three breaks during the day – morning playtime, afternoon playtime, and an hour and twenty-five minutes at what in those days we still called dinner-time.

Now that it’s the norm for all primary schoolchildren to stay at school for lunch, whether or not they’re buying a school meal, such a long midday break may seem absurd. Even where I live now, in a Cotswold village in which most pupils live within a short walk of the village primary school, everyone stays for lunch, with a brief outdoor playtime, weather permitting, before afternoon school.

But in my day, most mothers didn’t work. Oh, and most were married to and living with their children’s fathers. It wasn’t until I went to secondary school that I made a friend whose mother was divorced. Even then, she was the only child in the class with a single parent. My mum, however, did go out to work, having trained as a primary school teacher when I was very small – a job at which she excelled, and I’m sure must have been all the happier for doing it.

School Dinners

As a fussy eater, I was traumatised first by nursery school dinners, which I seldom stayed for – the sight and smell of baked beans still makes me nausous – and then by the food served at my otherwise idyllic primary school. Mrs Nash trying to force me to eat beetroot put me off it for life. Seeing beetroot still makes me shudder.

In those days, a decade after the end of war-time rationing (did you know that was not, astonishingly, until July 1954?), all the grown-ups around us had had it drummed into them not to waste food, so no wonder the dinner ladies – mostly lovely, kind souls – tried to make us clear our plates. Fortunately, my mum and my grandma had a better idea: that I should instead spend every school dinner-time at Grandma’s.

So, from the age of four until the age of eleven, the dinner bell prompted me to walk down the road and round the corner – thankfully, no roads to cross – to Grandma’s house. Part of the way I walked with friends who lived along the route, but the rest I traversed alone. To 21st-century parents, that may seem very young to be out and about on my own, but I felt  safe. Walking down suburban streets where if I had any worries, I could have run up the nearest garden path and knocked on the door for help. Chances were that at least one adult would be at home.

Initially, the walk was 25 minutes each way, and by the time I was in the top class, with much longer legs, I could do it in 15. The timing was perfect. Grandma would have lunch ready to serve when I arrived – always two courses, usually hot, and delicious traditional meals – and we’d sit down just in time to listen to interesting programmes on BBC Radio 4 as we ate: Desert Island Discs, Down Your Way, Twenty Questions – all of which nurtured my love of words and sense of humour and my interest in the wider world.

Fun & Games with Grandma

Once we’d finished eating, we’d clear the table and settle down to a game – Snakes and Ladders, Patience, Sevens, and Scrabble. Grandma’s word power was wonderful – she’d won prizes for her recitations as a child – and only relatively recently did I realise that Grandma must have often let me win at Scrabble to build my confidence.

An Education in Life

Grandma also kept abreast of current affairs, and I remember her teaching me about the introduction of postcodes and decimalisation. I used to pride myself on my mental arithmetic skills, but Grandma could convert sterling to decimal faster than I could.

She also introduced me to political issues. She didn’t get the vote until she was 28 (in Britain, universal women’s suffrage was introduced in 1928 in the Equal Franchise Act), and she cherished her voting rights. When I asked her which party she would be voting for in the next general election, she refused to tell me, instilling in my the importance of the privacy of the ballot box.

A Londoner who had lived through both World Wars, she told me on the day of Winston Churchill’s funeral (60 years ago tomorrow, codenamed “Operation Hope Not”) why he was such an important figure in world history. I was just six years old, but I took it all in.

Financial Advice

But one of my favourite pieces of advice was her financial guidance: what I’ve thought of ever since as The Two-Sheet Solution. I’ve just discovered that’s now accounting jargon for using two Excel sheets at once, but I prefer Grandma’s version:

to economise, on retirement, by using two sheets of toilet paper instead of three, thus instantly cutting the cost of toilet roll by a third.

Genius.

I first wrote about her Two-Sheet Solution 15 years ago here, at another pivotal time in my finances, when I was about to step down from my day job to devote my waking hours to building a new career as a writer. Fortunately, that’s gone well enough that I haven’t yet had to resort to this particular measure of Grandma’s – but I’m grateful for her advice, and for all that was my lovely Grandma.

 

 

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In Other News

I’ve been working flat out this week with various writing tasks, including a couple of guest posts for Jericho Writers, for whom I teach a self-publishing course twice a year, as well as offering mentoring sessions. I was delighted to meet a new mentee this week and am looking forward to helping her set priorities and goals in her writing career.

Find out more about my Simply Self-Publish Course, which next runs from April to June, here. Jericho also manages my mentoring work, and they’re the first point of contact for any enquiries – click here to ask about mentoring.

I’ve also just finished the first draft of my new Murder Mystery event script for Hawkesbury Drama Group, which will be performed in April. I have a script meeting with the director and her deputy on Friday to fine-tune it to suit their cast.

I’m gearing up for the March launch of my next mystery novel, which is based on last year’s play, The Importance of Being Murdered. Part of my task is to write a 1,000 word story as a teaser for the novel, and I’m going to have fun with that. Pre-order your copy of The Importance of Being Murdered here. 

Then this afternoon I have a meeting with my editor to talk about my plans for the fourth Cotswold Curiosity Shop mystery, due out in July.

As you may have guessed, I may have reached state pension age, but I won’t be retiring any time soon.

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What I’m Reading

With all that going on, it’s a wonder I have any time left to read, but I make time for reading every morning, which slows me down, hones my writing skills by osmosis, and generally keeps me sane.

 

 

 

 

This week, I’ve had a classic vibe going, reading Cakes & Ale by W Somerset Maugham and Where Angels Fear to Tread by E M Forster – both hugely enjoyable, absorbing must-reads. I haven’t had time to post reviews of them, but trust me, they’re both wonderful!

I’m also reading, very slowly, Nature’s Calendar, which breaks the British year down into 72 micro-seasons. I’m reading each section in real time as it happens, so will wait until the last day of the year to read this one.

New My Bookshelf App

To try to keep my heaving bookshelves under control, I’ve downloaded a new app to catalogue my books, so that I can make sure I don’t buy duplicates and also to help me manage collections of certain editions, eg classic 0range-spined Graham Greene Penguins and Folio editions of my favourite books, always acquired second-hand. The app is called “My Bookshelf” and is available for Google and Android. The free version only allows for 50 books, so I’ve bought the paid edition, which allows for any number. I’ll be very interested to see how many books I own altogether, once I’ve added them all. Adding books published since ISBNs were invented in 1967, as you just scan the barcode with your phone and they magically appear in your inventory. However, about half the books I own are vintage editions with neither ISBN nor barcode, so cataloguing my whole library could take some time!