Jam sandwiches and chip butties
Jam sandwiches and chip butties
When we were kids
we were poor,
Dickensian poor.
Food poverty
meant an existence
alternating between
jam sandwiches and chip butties.
Luxury was
bangers, mash and rice pud
on pay day.
One night,
I did a charity swim
at school,
which raised a few bob.
A fortune to us.
Mum asked me to lend her it
and she would pay me back
on pay day.
I did.
She didn't.
Was that stealing?
Probably?
Of course it was,
but a bigger crime
was not paying dad
a decent wage
for policing the streets
of our dirty city,
so that he could feed his family
something other than
jam sandwiches and chip butties.
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Hobbo's Poems 
That really is a crime, Hobbo. Why are the most valuable the least paid? We used to have banana sandwiches with sugar!
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😂 We could only dream of sugar!
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This could easily turn into that Monty Python sketch…
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🤣 You will be telling me next that you had a telly!
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A colour telly with 4 channels!
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🙈😂
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Why is it nothing ever changes for better. Lips flapping the right words, but nada. Just lots of nada. And by the way … You had chip butties? I love chip butties. We only dreamed of having chip butties! 😂
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Spot on Misky, a lot of nada! You were allowed to dream!😂
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Chip butties with tomato sauce, nothing nicer. I think we expected less, so it didn’t feel like we were missing out. Both my parents were hard workers but were never paid a decent wage.
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I would like to say that times have changed, but…😒
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A sad story. 😢.
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😒 He came good in the end though…he became an out of work poet!😂
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😂. I didn’t know there was such a thing! “Earn a fortune, they said. Imagine the world, they said. Join the poet army they said!”
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😂
I’m in the poet regiment,
I should be in the tank,
A simple poet foot soldier,
No money in the bank!
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😂😂
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👍
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They haven’t otherwise there wouldn’t be food banks.
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a powerful piece, Hobbo: an equitable society is one in which all workers are paid a decent wage —
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Agreed John.👍
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Brings back memories… we had a comic and a Bar Six each when Dad came home from work on Thursdays. Thursday was pay day. We measured the week by how long it was until Thursday and getting our treats. But yeah, that was the highlight, the rest of the time it was making the lamb neck stew last two days in a row and Dad, having worked hard all week, working hard all weekend too at the allotment, to provide the fresh veg his growing family needed.
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Thanks for the comment. You’ve brought back some memories for me too. Pay day was a Thursday for us, and Dad also had an allotment.
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Its mad that he was underpaid. What a joke. We used to have chippy tea on a Thursday and me and our kid shared fish and chips. What a treat it was!
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Happy days eh! Thanks for commenting Vinny.😂
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