I OFTEN read the complaints from people that because of low wages or unemployment they do not have enough money to live on.

Because of this dilemma they sometimes have to cut back on what they eat or turn down the heating.

It is sad that many elderly pensioners have to choose between eating or heating.

I am a pensioner and I remember the hard times we had to endure in the 1940s and 1950s.

I had two brothers and a sister and we all needed feeding and clothing but I can not remember us starving.

My father worked at the local colliery and my mother worked hard to make ends meet. Her job was made doubly difficult because of food rationing in those days.

Despite that, I think the 1940s were happy carefree days. People just had to accept that they were poor.

We lived in Long Row, Coxhoe, and the house we lived in had no central heating, a tin bath and an outside toilet but it was still luxurious compared to some other dwellings in the village.

My mother would often make a big pan of broth that would last two days. She baked her own bread, apple pies and a great big stotty cake that tasted delicious.

We had no expensive carpets. Our carpets were made in mat frames from old clothes. Yes, nothing was wasted in those days, everything that could be used again was recycled because of the Second World War.

To amuse ourselves in the evening we would listen to Dick Barton: Special Agent on the radio.

When we went to bed on a cold winter’s night my dad would wrap an old blanket around an oven shelf and put it at the bottom of our bed to keep us warm.

I will never forget when we were allocated a council house. You would have thought we had moved to the posh end of Coxhoe. They were happy days.

And one reason why we were so happy was because every one was equal.

In those days we had to scrape and scrounge – we all had nothing together.

Jimmy Taylor, Coxhoe.