Sit back and enjoy this thrilling account of the childhood days of Sydney Partridge in the 1930's - the days when it was a special treat for each member of the family to have a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

'Our house was about a mile each way down/up a steep hill to/from the beach and the town amusements. Ventnor is built on natural terrace levels, like parts of the French Riviera. Most of its roads run East/West at various levels, with 'zigzag' roads down the slopes between the levels, which connect them. This also brings traffic down to the lower levels of the town shops and ten down to the sea front. To shorten the journeys for pedestrians, there are numerous steep flights of steps which run down from one level to the next, cutting across the 'zigzags'.

There is a pier running out from the promenade. From the far end of the pier, or from pleasure boats at sea, the view of Ventnor is a picture of terrace upon terrace of houses and gardens, from sea level up to about 300 ft. high, where the Downs begin.

Although my father was in a well respected position at the Post Office (with rights to a pension, which was rare in those days), they were not very well paid. My mother liked to have us 'nicely dressed' with a new grey flannel suit (jacket and trousers matching) each year, bought by post from Swan & Edgar's store in London's Regent Street.

To help out with the family finances my mother adopted the practice among seaside families of 'taking in visitors' ('paying guests') during several months in the summer.

She did not advertise, or accept strangers, but only acquaintances from their former colleagues in London, or personal recommendations from them. They used to come for a week or a fortnight each year for several years in succession.

Few people could afford to 'go away' for holidays in those days (holidays with pay were not given by all employers), but my mother charged only one guinea (21 shillings = 105p) per week per person. This was for full board (4 meals per day) - and few people did not walk back to the house to have all their meals! It would, of course, have been expensive for them to buy their lunch at a cafe and they could ill afford that extra expense.

Some of the girls were so keen to be able to have an annual holiday at the seaside that they asked to share a double bed with another girlfriend of theirs. On one occasion we had six of these office girls sharing our two large bedrooms (3 girls in each double-bed!) - all at their own pressing request, arranged by them, as a group, in advance, by six girls who knew each other well. They were a jolly crowd and they used to come back to stay with us year after year and some came back with their new husbands. Later one couple came back with their first child. It was an arrangement that suited us all well. They got a cheap holiday, which they could just afford and although my mother made very little profit from it, we did eat better than we would otherwise have been able to. Full board for them meant there was a joint of meat more than once a week, and so we all benefited from that.

To say that the charge was a guinea per week probably doesn't convey much to a later generation. £3 per week would have been a good wage for a working man to bring up a family in the country, where the cost of living was reckoned to be lower than in a large city.

Women were paid significantly less than men (perhaps 25% less) and were expected to give up their mobs when they got married (indeed in the Civil Service there was a 'Marriage Bar' which enforced this). Usually the wives soon had one or two children to look after. As it was the husband who had to provide the money for the whole family, it was not unfair that their wages should be higher than a woman's. Generally, a woman in employment had no husband or children to support.

This system was unfair of course, in the case of women who had an elderly parent or a sick relative or a child to support. This was demonstrated, to our cost, when my father had to accept retirement on health grounds (near blindness) at the age of 46 with a wife and two sons at school to support. My mother was very fortunate to be taken on by the P.O. on a seasonal basis (summer season and Xmas and Easter periods) at the lower rates of pay of a 'female temporary clerk', although doing the same work as my father had been doing.

Apart from the cost of the food, the visitors' 21/- (105p) per week covered all the work which my mother had to do to 'put them up' - the laborious washing of sheets, pillowcases, table linen etc. This was at a time when there were no washing machines or 'laundrettes', and so it was down to the kitchen boiler (or 'copper'), the mangle, the clothesline and then ironing with the 'flat iron' heated on the gas ring. There were no tumble dryers, of course, so if the washing didn't dry 'on the line' it had to be draped over a clotheshorse by the warmth of the 'kitchener' stove.

We had auxiliary heating and cooking facilities by means of a 'Valor' paraffin oil stove. This had a small oven - a cube shaped thin metal case, with a door at front and a hole underneath, to be placed on top of the stove - a rather dangerous contraption apt to fall over. We also had a one bar electric fire (1,000 watts) that we connected to the adapter from the ceiling light bulb (no power plugs). It had no thermostatic control in those days so you just switched it off if it got too warm.

Housework was a full time job for a wife/mother in those days and having those visitors during the summer must have made a lot of work for my mother. I was a fairly dutiful son and used to help her on Saturdays and school holidays by getting the shopping from the town (a mile down hill and another mile up hill with the load of shopping). My mother used to tell me to come back by bus but that would have cost a whole penny (child's fare) and I was sufficiently conscious of the value of money to save her from spending that penny!

I still remember the price of some of the groceries I bought - white sugar 2 and halfpence per pound; Sylvan Glenbutter 8d per half pound (all the way from New Zealand). Prices seemed constant during the thirties, with milk at 3d per pint; 1 and half penny stamp for a letter; 1d stamp for a postcard (halfpenny for a Xmas card); 1d for a box of 50 matches.

There was no inflation - on the contrary with the Depression (1930 or so) the pay of Civil Servants was indexed downwards to reflect the fall in the cost of living! This was a time of severe unemployment in the industrial areas (the Jarrow March from Tyne-side to London etc).

In our country/seaside area children were not aware of the Depression - though certainly there was very little money about. For example, although the price of ice-cream (always vanilla, none of your fancy 'raspberry ripple' or milk chocolate flake stuck in it!) was ld for a cornet or 2d for a wafer sandwich, we did not usually buy one when we saw the 'Stop me and Buy One' tricycles of Walls or El Dorado.

We had a special treat, once a week, of a scoop of ice-cream from the grocer's nearby, for which one of us took our glass 'Sundae dishes' across there to be filled (very elegant!). Another once a week treat was 'almond slices' - a slice of flaky pastry sandwich with a custard filling and with almond flavoured white icing on top. My mother used to buy just two of them, one for each of us children and we took it in turns each alternate week to have first choice of the two slices (which Mum had chosen to be as near identical as possible, of course!).

We had pocket money of 6d per week (later increased to 9d as we got older), which was sufficient for us to be able to afford one, or perhaps two visits to the cinema (of which there were two in that small town). Saturday matinee was 3d per child and the cheapest seats in the evening were 6d.

For a weekly supply of sweets Dad used to buy some on the way back from church on Sundays, 8d worth of Sharp's Toffee-Chocs (each being a chocolate centre surrounded by toffee) at 2d per quarter pound. After Sunday lunch it was my job, (as the one who enjoyed the task), to count them out into four piles. I used to meticulously report if there were two or three left over from the four equal piles and our parents would decide what to do with that surplus. (I don't imagine that our parents ate all of their shares, of course, but no doubt they encouraged the exercise as it engendered a sense of 'fair play' and sharing fairly what was 'our lot'.'

A far cry from the many children today who enjoy (and expect) the sweets of their choice, two, three or more times a week. Imagine the look we would get if we asked children today to share a bag of sweets out equally with their siblings!