The Vulgar Subject of Money

First off, a good new year to everyone.

One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2017, I drove from Cambridge to Loughton in Essex. I had volunteered to be a judge in an informal Taekwondo poomsae competition between our club in Cambridge and the Loughton Club led by Master Chan Sau. Poomsae refers to patterns of defence and attack techniques, which we learn by heart and perform in competition and in belt gradings. In Japanese martial arts, these patterns are called kata. However, this story is not about martial arts.

On this beautiful summer’s day, I set the car’s satnav for the postcode of the sports centre in Loughton in which the competition was to take place, as I had only a vague idea of the geography of that area of Essex on the north-east edge of London. The satnav directed me along conventional routes towards east London, but as we neared our destination, it took me along meandering little roads through Epping Forest (very pretty on this sunny day), then zig-zagging most inefficiently through built-up areas of Loughton. My thought at the time was that the satnav’s stored information was simply not up to date for that area, but I later found that this conclusion was wrong.

The town of Loughton contains the Bank of England’s incinerator for the destruction of old banknotes. As I understand it, the routes in and out of the town are deliberately rendered complex. This is so that if there is any funny business in the way of pinching the old banknotes, there is no quick getaway to the nearby arterial roads, the M25, the M11 or the A1. Some employees had smuggled considerable amounts of used notes out in their underwear in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, but were caught due to attempting to bank enormous sums of money in ten and twenty pound notes.

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In my early teens, I shared a Saturday job with my oldest friend James Barker, delivering fish and collecting money for previous deliveries, for a local fishmonger, Bill Kay. Most weeks, James would do the round, some weeks we shared it, and some weeks I did the round alone. I received fifty pence for this (remember this was the early 1970’s), and I would usually spend it on a single. For less mature generations, a single was a seven inch vinyl record played at 45 revolutions per minute.

There was one address, in a rather rough and ready street, to which we never delivered but always requested fifty-seven pence for previous supplies. The door was answered by an enormous woman who always seemed to have a kitchen knife in her hand. The dialogue went as follows:

DUFFY: Bill Kay, fish money, fifty-seven pence, please.

WOMAN WITH KITCHEN KNIFE: Next week, son.

DUFFY: Right you are.

Exit Duffy, at some speed.

Later, after we no longer worked for Bill Kay, James confided in me that when he did the round on his own, he never actually called at that house.

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I was a Health Service employee (South Thames Cancer Registry, Sutton) and trade union officer during the NHS pay dispute of 1982. Throughout the spring and summer of 1982, coinciding with the Falklands War, I was very busy on trade union business. I spent a lot of time on picket lines, attending organisation meetings at my union’s HQ in Euston Road, and phoning round fellow officials, trying (unsuccessfully) to get some union funds allocated to the staff of the Medical Records Department at St Helier Hospital, Carshalton, who bravely came out on strike whenever called. It’s funny how once people are put in a position of power, their first instinct is to try to prevent things from happening rather than to make things happen.

There was a considerable amount of patriotic fervour in London due to the Falklands war, and taking industrial action was thought by many to be in some way showing disloyalty to our country. On the other hand, Jan Bell, who shared an office with me, said something rather perceptive. I had just finished a phone call with some satisfaction on hearing that again there would be some striking members and a picket presence at St Helier the following week. Jan was a lovely person, sadly no longer with us. Anyway, she remarked as I put the phone down, ‘This is your Falklands, isn’t it?’

I guess my twenty-five year old self of 1982 would regard me now as at best a champagne socialist, and at worst a class traitor.

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In October 1982, I changed jobs from the Cancer Registry to the Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park, and moved from far south London to Wembley. This entailed an increase in rent and payment of a substantial deposit, so I wasn’t yet feeling the enhanced affluence of the decent rise in salary that the move conferred. Shortly after moving to Wembley, I had a call from someone who shall be nameless, who was in some distress and who needed an immediate loan of £100 or her telephone would be cut off.

I couldn’t refuse, but I stipulated that the money should be returned by Christmas. In order to curtail my own spending after this further layout of resources, I decided to cut out alcohol and meat. At the end of the first week of this austere regimen, I found that I had saved thirty-five pounds. That was a lot of money in 1982. What had I been eating and drinking before? I wondered. A pound of fillet steak a day washed down with a bottle of single malt? Anyway, I had the hundred quid saved in three weeks.

I shared the house in Wembley with Delyth from Llanelli, Helen from Brynamman and Sarah from Exeter. On one occasion during my Spartan three weeks, Delyth and Helen looked rather askance on the giant pot of dhal which I was cooking up.

‘Ych a fi,’ said Delyth, ‘That stuff doesn’t look very appetising.’

Helen was less diplomatic, declaring, ‘It looks like diarrhoea.’