HANGOVER WAS CHEAP BUYING IN HAPPY NINETIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 91, 6 September 1948, Page 5

HANGOVER WAS CHEAP BUYING IN HAPPY NINETIES

Recently, the Beacon compared costs of living here with costs of living in England, and the figures didn’t show this Pacific paradise in quite the favourable light in which certain of our administrators regard it. However, we’re not the only ones who kick. The English consider their costs are pretty steep, too. We have just received a communication from Mr Edward Grocock, a plumber, of Hull, Yorks., who considers things, over there are pretty grim so* far as prices are concerned. He claims that, even so far back as 1944, the English £1 was worth only 3/4 in what it could buy. He' can be consoled now. It’s worth £1 New Zealand. We don’t kndw if that , happy thought will do him much good. Mr Grocock doesn’t talk! much about present-day prices over there. Maybe it hurts too much. But he has some interesting figures to quote from advertisements publisned in Hull in the “Happy Nineties.” A few samples: Bottles of brandy, 4/3; rum, 3/8; whisky, 3/4; gin 2/9. Boots and shoes, all sizes, women’s .1/4, men’s 4/11. Potatoes, 141 b for 3d; 1401 b coal, 9d. Those were the days! A man could buy a decent hangover and a pair of shoes to keep the wife quiet about it for the price of two bottles of beer at Whakatane today. i Thanks, Mr Grocock, you’ve made us understand just what Grandad means when he. sighs for the “good old days”.