Open Writing

Listening to the radio this morning I heard a young couple talking about the struggle they were having dealing with rising costs on a salary which remained static. Like most young responsible couples, they had bought an old house and were busy renovating it. They had a couple of young children and were, in short, Mr and Mrs Average who, not many years ago, would have been living in “Godzone” with a 4 wheel drive and a boat, not too many hassles about paying bills and enjoying a good life style. Now I hear they are going to the shops at the end of the week, just as they are about to close, and buying reduced price bread, meat and vegetables, etc.

The food banks are crying out for donations, their shelves are empty, but the folk who used to add those extra bits and pieces, beans and soup etc, to the shopping list, are finding that the funds don’t run to it any more. In New Zealand? This can’t be. Within a very short space of time the world has turned upside down. Why?

We are at the other end of the scale, retired in a debt-free home and what we thought was a nice little nest egg, well invested to provide for the extras of life. We retired feeling confident that our future was safe and so it ought to have been. Then there was a stock market crash which sent us hurrying to the bank to transfer our portfolio into a safer area, before it vanished into the bottomless pit of some nonexistent black hole. The Iraq war has done nothing to help things, and now oil! It’s through the roof and with it everything else. Transport costs are added to just about everything in the shops and at a much higher rate than is called for.

When petrol topped $2 a litre and was predicted to rise to $3 we started to rethink our trips to further afield places. Perhaps a walk round the block or up the hill would do instead. Visits to the big supermarket in the nearby town were stretched to three weeks instead of two and our shopping treat of lunch at the pub became a coffee and sandwich at the café.

But the price of oil is now falling and falling steadily, so why hasn’t the price of petrol come down? “Oh no,” the pundits tell us, “We have to get rid of all the expensive stuff in the refinery.” What happened to the cheap stuff in the refinery when oil went up at first? Somehow they didn’t have to sell that off at the low price before the cost at the pump went up. That went up overnight. But it wasn’t just fuel which increased, everything else did, food, clothing, consumer goods, you name it, they have shot up, and what’s more they won’t come down. They never do. We live with spiralling inflation but wages remain the same, as do pensions, and this seems to apply to the world, not just to New Zealand.

Where have I heard this before? A friend of mine lent me a lovely little book to read, “Ethel and Ernest” by Raymond Briggs. It is written in cartoon form and is the story of his parents’ life from the 1920’s to the 70’s, in short the story of my parents’ life and possibly yours. Ethel and Ernest meet during the depression, court and save for the deposit on a house. They sleep on the floor until they can afford a second-hand bed and slowly, over the years, they furnish their home with bits and pieces picked up at auctions and second-hand stalls. They improve it in the D.I.Y. way and Ethel makes curtains and loose covers from remnants bought from the market. We follow them as their son arrives, then through the war years, the blitz, and their child’s evacuation to the country. The post war years bring free health and education and their son reaches the dizzy heights of grammar school, art school and his certificates and degrees hang on the wall in the front room. National Service gives him the haircut his mother has been pleading with him to have and afterwards “the girl” arrives on the scene and takes young Freddy away to live in a “barn” (highly desirable residence) in the country. Time moves on, they age, Ethel succumbs to Alzheimer’s and dies and we watch Ernest struggle on with his lonely life for a few years longer. The end finally comes and their much loved and treasured possessions are sent off to the Salvation Army.

It is a true story and one we can all identify with. It is the story of a couple, very much in love, who never got into debt, paid their way and didn’t crave for instant luxury and possessions now.

At the moment we seem to be sitting on the brink of a very similar situation but with one big difference. The young people of today, for the most part, have never had to save for things. What they wanted they got, in this age of indulgence, affluence and HP. They have never known shortages and lack Ethel and Ernest’s skills and attitude to life. From being the spoilt generation they are becoming the angry generation. The rug has been pulled out from under them.

I have my mother’s skills, which were acquired from her mother and, because of this, and the fact that I am at the other end of the age scale, not just starting and having to bring up young children, we will survive very comfortably. But will this ill-equipped generation? We are in the middle of a recession and I have a horrible feeling we are heading for a worldwide depression and it worries me as I think of previous world depressions and their outcomes. Then I take heart as I think of the young couple on the radio this morning who are really trying to live within their means.

Grannies of the world unite and pass on your skills if anyone will listen.

Yes history has a way of repeating itself. God forbid that this depression ends the same way as the last.