Well i can see it hasnt taken long for people to react somewhat vehemently to my posting. I promise you i tell the truth and i shall further elaborate...
My mother and father never married. My mother parted company from my father for various reasons. She brought us up on our own in the 70s. We were Catholic and relied very much on the catholic church . Remember those xmas collections at school where you were asked to bring in non perishables and tinned goods to make up food parcels for the poor at xmas? We were on the receiving end courtesy of a pre xmas visit by the parish priest.
We lived in a draughty council flat. The only form of heat was a coal fire which had a back to back range which also hated the hot water. We only had lino and the add mat on the concrete floor . We had a crappy black and white tv that was rented. The windows were metal,single glazed and the wind howled through them. In winter they froze inside and out.
To supplement the heating, my brother and i would go and pinch coal off the railway sidings about half a mile away. It was dangerous of course and trespassing.
Sometimes i would go out with my mother to the park or cemetary with a shopping trolley and collect fallen wood to burn on the fire.
Food was basic and simple. At Christmas if we were lucky we would have a chicken.
As i say, we rarely had new clothes. Sometimes my mother would drag us to the social security office to blag a grant Giro off them by showing them how scruffy we were. That was before the days of crisis loans. The catholic church ran charitable centres where you could go to get some second hand furniture and clothing. The parish priest would give us a letter to go.
As ive said, ive known my mother pick up seemingly serviceable discarded shoes and clothing and take it home and wash it for us to wear.
I remember a neighbour, a single mother,,one day her gas had run out and she needed a shilling for the meter. One of the local lads went round her flat and shagged her in exchange for the shilling,,she was that desperate.
A woman round the corner ho was also a single mother also seemed to have quite a few male visitors. I was friends with her kid and they would tell me the man/men were their "uncles".
In those days there were no pressure groups,no screaming media, and the only rowntree i had heard of was the name on discarded sweetie wrappers.
But as i say, guess what ,we all got fed, we are all still here and we all are working and have never been jailed or been in trouble. My mother died long before her time of cancer.
I will have to check what passes for poverty now...but again,even then, i wouldnt have classed us as living in poverty. We were certainly poor but the state safety net saved us and kept our heads above water and i for one have repaid them many times over.