How did people leave home at 15…

[Holdinguphalfthesky]

… move to London and start working as a music PR? Just reading an interview with Mariella Frostrup and it says that’s what she did. Even back in the 70s, how would someone have done that? I seem to remember in Caitlin Moran’s book How to be a Woman, she also walked into a job in music journalism at a very young age.

Is it unreasonable of me to ask how they did it? What’s being glossed over in the retelling?

We were way more resilient, had way lower expectations, and had parents who expected us to pull it together and make a go of life. Moving to London with nothing, no job, no money, no friends, was tough, but plenty of us did it. After I while temping and living in a dorm and some very dodgy places wherever rent was cheap, I was eventually given a job that led to a lot of money and big promotions. It's been a very long slog, but that's how it started. Life and expectations were different.

Yes I was like this too, I was desperate to grow up and move out, from the age of about 12.

Erm what?

presume you’re saying that the modern tenants are privileged and non resilient. Presumably not as bad as the 1970s tenants of squats, or the one who made a hole in a park home as above.

My grandparents spent their whole lives doing midnight flits, leaving months worth of rent unpaid each time.

I lived in London for some of my young teens Had a flat at 17. Worked full time in the week, A levels at evening class and socializing at weekends. No financial help from parents. Not that unusual and that was late 80s

The LANDLORDS

I think there was an element of it doesn't matter if you're skint and living somewhere crap, because all your mates are in the same boat. As previous poster says, South and East London were not desirable places to live. Battersea was not "South Chelsea" and there were no hipsters in Shoreditch.

Those roles are not needed much now though.

I work for one of the biggest employers in the uk. We have less than 20 PAs in the whole company. They each cover 4/5 people.

I've lived alone outside of my parents house since I was 16. I did the last two years of required schooling in a boarding school type thing, then finished high school, then did a master's. All while paying my own bills and navigating life in a wheelchair. But I also live in a country were I never had to pay for uni, and we get paid to go into higher education (including a grant for the length of hs education). I was born in the 70s, and I know I couldn't have done it in London at 16. That came after uni when I moved there for a job. And had to live in shared flats for the first time.

Times were different. We were expected to move out (I did so a bit earlier than normal), but the opportunities were better too.

Opportunities are available same as they were - a shitty room with no heating and communal toilet, washing yourself in a bucket with water from a kettle. I am pretty sure that these options are still available fairly cheaply for those who want them. Do you know any 16 year old who will find it acceptable nowadays? All my friend's kids want to live in a loft or, at the very least, a "cosy flat" in central London.

I left school at Easter when I was 15yrs old, in the Midlands. I only went back to school to sit my exams and was 16 later that summer. I feel sorry for kids having to stay at school until they’re 18/19 when it doesn’t really benefit them.

I think one of the biggest changes is that we didn’t rely on China to manufacture and supply everything back then, so there were a lot more menial factory jobs you could walk straight into and they were available to school leavers with no prior work experience. You could earn a decent wage doing a 40plus hr week and I was able to pay for my driving lessons at 17.

Housing was cheaper back then too and there were a lot more council houses before Maggie brought in the stupid right to buy and stopped rebuilding new ones. Typical Tory short term thinking! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I bought a tiny starter home with a 100% endowment mortgage at 21 yrs old. It was brilliant. I sold up after 15 yrs when I got married. My lovely neighbour still lives in the house next door to mine and they’re still very cheap affordable houses compared to many parts of the country.

Wasn’t sure what is was you were most surprised about - the leaving home at that age or getting in to music PR?
In any case, I’m younger than her - 54 - and I basically left school at 15 because I’d done my O Levels before my 16th birthday so no need to be in school anymore. I literally got on a train to London (about an hours journey) and went to the first employment agency outside the station, and I got offered the first job I went for. The interview was on the same day, I went straight there, and was offered the job as an Import/Export clerk in a Japanese Merchant bank. I started the day after my 16th birthday and moved straight to London in a shared flat. The cost of that wasn’t much different to commuting costs from where I lived so seemed a sensible move. Three years later I was managing a small department, then by early twenties managed a large department at a different bank. Kept moving up and on, and now run my own business with DH developing IT systems for Imp/Exp companies and banks. Only about half of my peers did A Levels (despite our school being the most highly academic achieving school in the area) and I can remember, literally, only three went on to university and that was because their chosen field absolutely required a degree. You did not need a degree level education (or even A Level) for so many entry level jobs then and companies took you on with the expectation of training you in that role and you staying there for some time. I left home so young partly because of an awful home life so no loss for me, but that wasn’t true of everyone I knew of course and the majority of my friendship group had moved out by 17 or 18. I couldn’t have afforded to go on to further education even if I had wanted to, I needed to earn.

I think we’ve both lost and gained in some ways. Education is now compulsory up to a certain age and I do think that the opportunity for HE/FE, simply for the sake of it, is a good thing (not that it’s cost free). But I also think that more of those kind of entry level jobs really should be available in the same way to younger people, without the need qualification beyond GCSE.

Are the dangers being overstated now, though? What exactly are the dangers? I had part time jobs from the age of 13, and often used to hitchhike in the 90s and early 00s, because I had no other way of getting around. Yes, I got into a few scrapes, but nothing really dangerous.

Certainly this was still true for my young adulthood. I went to uni and the halls and university houses were all furnished with 2’6 beds (taller friends lived with their feet sticking out of the bed), a kitchen, a bathroom and a shower room shared between 10 of us. Even private rented houses had single beds in, I didn’t get a flat with a double bed until I was about 25. No washing machines, all that. I do wonder whether HMOs and resident landlords might make a return like Rising Damp just because homes are so expensive and so many people aren’t starting families, so maybe demand for cheaper living will prevail over the need to rent an entire house?

I think a lot of you are being very down on the current youngsters.

I know a kid from DS school who moved to London before Xmas - a week after his 17th birthday, to work in a similar field. Quiet kid but confident and knows what he wants. He is living in student digs and by all accounts is having a great time.

My own DS wants to move out in the next year or so and he is still only 16. He also has a plan, wants to work away for the summer hols to see how he gets on before going back to College in Sept and moving out after leaving College.

I wouldn't have trusted DS with an umberella a couple of years ago but I can see now that he would be fine. He is really keen to be independent and I would trust him to do it, I left home at 19 in 1992.

I started work at 17 in 1977. You could just walk into a job then.
I would have left school at 16 but I missed my O levels due to being seriously ill; so had to do an extra year at school. My parents then moved away from the city where I grew up/worked. So I rented a bed-sit to be near work and friends. Bought my first house in 1981 aged 21. £600 deposit and £12k mortgage. Interest rates were 15%. Had to live very frugally. 🙂

Left home when I was 16.
My parents very wealthy, middle class parents didn’t want me.

I knew I wanted to go to Uni in Manchester it was the late 80s, early 90s days of Madchester.
Lived in a squat in Moss Side at a time when nobody wanted to live there and the Local Authority had neither the money, nor the mind, to do anything about the place.

It was a fantastic community of squatters.
Everyone looked after everyone else.
You couldn’t have many possessions in case the place was busted, you would be surprised at the few essentials you need.
It also kept us free of burglars, nothing to take, nothing to steal.
Some of us took recreational drugs not me, I am allergic to too many things to risk it. No-one kept drugs at the squat.

At that time there would be occasional shootings outside.
Mostly though our neighbours just wanted to live a quiet life.
I often used to confidently walk home on my own, through Moss Side’s back streets in the dark.
At the time you could take £5, have a great night out until the early hours and come home with change.

One of the few house rules was to respect our neighbours.

One neighbour was an older, retired, Windrush man.
I met him on one of the gantrys.
I used to take him a freshly cooked plate of food and he would tell me all about his life.
Over time we came to love one another in a Grandfather/Granddaughter way.

Once, I even took him down South to meet my own two Grandparents. They all got on brilliantly and he stayed a week longer than we planned!

Some years later he arrived at the hospital, his hat in his hand, to see my brand new, first born DC.
He showed me so many kindnesses.

He lived well into his 90s.
He never went into a home and I continued visiting him at his house, then finally in hospital.
At his funeral I cried like a baby and I saw again a few of his family, with whom I have kept in touch.
They gave me a bundle of the letters I had written him over the years, I cannot look at them without crying.

Took my A Levels in Manchester, 3 in a year, part time while I was working 30 hours a week.
Got into Uni and stayed in the squat.

As I was in Manchester I didn’t get into music journalism, nor did I try.
Though I did walk into an excellent career in the broadcast industry.
If you know anything about the industry, you know me.

It sounds mad now, a small 16 year old white girl living in one of the ‘worst’ places in the UK, but it was the best time.
Character building because you found your character, your strength, pretty damned quickly.

My own DCs lived with us well into their 20s they went away to Uni that was their choice and we were happy with that.
Though DH (who had also left home at 18) and I have always wondered whether they missed out on all of that early-adult life as a result.

Mariella Frostrup was born in the same year as me and was one of the older ones in her school year. She would have started secondary school in September 1974 and the earliest she could have left legally would be June 1979. By which time she would be approaching 17. No one was allowed to leave school (unless expelled) before they had completed 5 years of secondary school.

Perhaps she went to private school and bunked off? Whatever, it's hardly something to be proud of.

Yeah my 20 year old nephew is bumming around at home with no plan, or even any motivation to get out and crack on with life. He and his mum seem to find the idea that he would move out into anything but his own flat inconceivable. It's bizarre to me, I couldn't wait to get out and live my own life, and living in shared digs was part of the fun.

It was still easy to leave home young in the 90s.
I left home at 16 and lived in rented rooms or bedsits.
It was easier to rent somewhere. No guarantors necessary. Easy to get work and also easier to get housing benefit

When your grandfather left school is not really relevant to Mariella Frostrup who was born in 1962.

My mother moved away from home to work when she was 14, quite a bit before the 70s though. You had to grow up quick and earn your living, parents couldn't afford to support children once they were capable of working, particularly when there were lots of younger siblings. Only the lucky few carried on in education past 14, later compulsory education went up to 15. I remember boys complaining bitterly that they would have to stay in school until they were 15. They wanted to get a job and start earning at 14 like their older siblings and parents had.

Life was very different back then. Society was very different. DH left home at 15 and lived in what then was called a squat, which was full of people with jobs who worked and was worlds apart from what we would call a squat these days.

I left home at the start of my O levels, dossing with friends because I refused to comply with the "my house my rules" conditions set by my dad.
Missed all the morning exams, and only passed the ones were both parts of the exam were set in the afternoon. I got a data entry job at the head office of a large building firm, £10/week with a load of married ladies earing "pin money" and blokes in white coats getting paid a load more for doing the computer stuff after we'd transmitted all the paper data to punch cards.

Lured away by Kwik Save offering £30/week to memorise their prices each morning and work a check out desk, quit 3 weeks later when the cleaner didn't turn up and the male manager ordered me to go and clean the filthy toilets. Told him to do it himself and walked out without a backwards glance.

Got a job as a trainee manageress at Debenhams the next day, and moved into lodgings with a lovely old lady in Cheetham Hill. Two years later I was bored and set off to an au-pair job in Greece on the magic bus.

The only time I was asked about qualifications was when I turned up in Debenhams asking if they had any vacancies, and the manager of one of their shop in shop ladies clothing departments asked me if I had any qualifications. When I told her I had 3 o levels she offered me a post as trainee manageress, without ever asking to see any proof of my English O levels and needlework qualification.

Yes I agree, I probably should’ve said dangers that we perceive now.

Even today there are ways and means - lots of sofa surfing, staying in third (teeny bedrooms for extra rent for people leasing (unofficially of course)) there are also a few dormitory style hostels which are cheap. There is also schemes like guardianships for community living. Rentals are brutal in London with students paying over 1k for a room in a flat in not great areas. Very few at less than that.