I found a shopping list from 1969

[Trouthallgrapefruit]

Interesting isn’t it!

Oh fascinating! Article in Guardian a week or so ago about an artist who over a number of years, has collected shopping lists left in trolleys at one branch of Waitrose. Oddly, I have a yen to read them.

So I’m not sure if I’ve factored all the conversions correctly. But I think that 12 shillings for the Lurpak makes it similarly expensive as it is today when converting it to a metric amount, putting it in and inflation calculator and converting lb to grams.
£12.64 for 3lb - approx 1.3kg
£14 for 2x 750g tubs in sainsburys.
But we have to pay more for housing etc.

Not a mathematician - may be talking out of my arse but was just curious. Also too invested!

The Be-Ro book is alive and well in our house.

highly recommend it, go buy yourself a copy now, they’re only a few pounds.

Yeah it's almost unimaginable now. No one would bother baking for anyone any more. People seemed to care alot more for each other in those days.

Splendid's Nan and her friends/neighbours may not have been representative. Nothing like that happened anywhere we lived when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Once in a way someone might say 'I've been baking, would you like some of these?' but it wasn't a regular thing.

I had forgotten about Sugar Smacks !

I make 12 schillings £12.93 using the ONS published stats from September 1969 to July 2023 (August 2023 not yet available). I also worked it out backwards longhand via a discounting formula I have memorised and got £12.44.

Much depends on rounding and as yours is only 4.5p out from the average I think you pretty much nailed it!

We didn't carry cameras around with us all the time taking 158 selfies everyday.

I remember them. Also Cydrax.

I also remember Puffa Puffa Rice (with pirates on the box front) and Swisskit. I have yet to find someone other than me who remembers Swisskits. :(

I’d risk it 🙂

We had tinned raspberries over Swiss roll in the 80s!

2 what grapefruit? Trouthall?

I remember sugar smacks. They were horrible.

Do you think the prices were added after the shopping was done to help with budgeting (different colour)?

I find it interesting that she has been so precise about the brand names (BeRo with the capital R, Porage Oats) yet she writes Rice Crispies not Krispies.

@MabDresden - I think the above posts give the explanation as to what the book was. Such different times!

When did I last see a handwritten shopping list? Years ago, nobody needs them any longer. They are a fascinating insight into the past, thanks for posting OP.

Rubbish. I do a handwritten list every week! I dont order online or get deliveries,and its quicker for me to write freehand on paper than tap a list into my phone. The slip of paper also doesnt keep going into sleep mode.

I use one because if I had my phone out as I went round the supermarket I’d likely drop it while I was reaching for the cornflakes, or leave it on a shelf next to the yoghurt by mistake.

@Seychal I'd risk it for a Swisskit!

The list is an order from the householder in a grocery book.

The pencil is what the grocer added - so prices, and any additions that were added later by phone, or someone popping on to say “can you add X to Mrs Jones’s order”.

The book would then be delivered back to the householder with the goods, the total paid recorded in the book as a receipt, and then the book used again the following week.

My Mum makes a handwritten shopping list every week, as she has no truck with anything electronic, except for playing Wordle on the ipad we gave her for a significant birthday, and occasionally, and with great trepidation, googling something. Her list is on a small piece of scrap paper and follows the order of the aisles in the local supermarket, so fruit and veg first, then tins, bread, household items etc etc. She'd be in a right tizz if they ever changed the layout! She'd never be untidy enough to leave it in the trolley, though. It comes home with her and the shopping and ends it days in the recycling bin.

That’s because they were Rice Crispies in 1969. The spelling has changed - and not for the better.

'Mum says put it on the book please', to be settled up on Dad's payday when the housekeeping appeared.