Advice from Granny Gert

 Some advice received from my grandmother many years ago, struck me that it just might have some relevance for today.

Since you will be teaching, you won’t require too many dresses and clothes. You won’t have time to wear them and fashions soon change…

The state of happiness in this world is to bring your wants down to just requirements.

Don’t buy anything on “hire purchase,” (meaning credit). That is like living a lie to world, having things you can’t afford to pay for. Pare down and don’t owe a penny.

Life these days is not easy. The old Victorian days were slow but sure, heavy going and thrifty. Leave cocktails and smoking alone: two ways for money to vanish.

Granny Gert had four children and was widowed when the oldest was ten. Money was scarce and she often prefaced a purchase with: “Now, I’m a widow with four children…implying that she was owed some kind of a deal!

She was also famous expressions such as:  “If you are as big as a house, you’ll obey me!” and:

“Home, the place where you grumble the most and are treated the best.”

She lived her whole life in England. In her 70s she boarded a freighter for a six-week trip to visit her daughter (my mother) and family in Seattle, Washington. Her favorite activity while there was to take a bus downtown to the skid row area and see a movie. It cost her 15 cents.