Looking Back: Can you remember taking empty beer bottles back to the beer off?

We had to be much more resourceful in days gone by! Empty beer bottles could be taken back to the beer off and even empty dandelion and burdock or cream soda bottles. You could also take empty jam jars back to the local grocers, but we never found very many of those. They were always in demand for mothers jam making, for keeping tadpoles in or butterflies which soon turned into a powdery mess. Also, a trip down to the woods at Woolley Wood Bottom in bluebell time meant that we had jam jars full of the blooms which didn't always last a day and which looked much better in their natural habitat.

The abundance of the corner shops was very important, especially to some boys at our primary school who went into the nearest one for a 'couple of fags' with no questions asked about irrelevances like age!

We spent what money we could accumulate on sweets. They were the last things to come off ration in 1953 and once that happened we were llike, well 'kids in a sweet shop!'

They were always kept in glass bottles, carefully weighed out and placed into white paper bags

There were other methods of obtaining small amounts of money in those days. Mother saved money off coupons from washing powder boxes and ladies magazines. Your local shop would take them and give you about half the value of the coupons in sweets. Anything was better than nothing! And we were always on the lookout to make a few pence. I don't think anything that might be considered hardship by children today actually did us any harm. It possibly helped us to appreciate what we have now!

When my husband was old enough, he obtained a Sheffield Star paper round. He delivered the paper six nights a week, receiving ten shillings which today would be fifty pence! He started after school each day at 4pm and finished around 6pm.

There seems to be much more concern about childrens safety in todays world. I'd I'd like to think that they would have the same work ethic that we did then if necessary. But, in what is supposed to be a more affluent society than we knew, do they need to work for their pocket money or was it just expected of us?