Ethel went to Norwich for a meeting. She paid a £1 deposit on a pair of shoes to be picked up next Monday. I had 5 gallons of paraffin from Dixons. £1.45. 29p per gallon.
Notes
Ethel refers to my grandmother Ethel May Cecilia Parkin. Although grandad does not say so, the meeting was probably church-related, see Chapter 107. For details of shoes and other things that grandma bought in the early seventies, see Chapter 108.
Dixons was a hardware store on Reepham Road that grandad used a lot, see Chapter 85. Grandad bought paraffin for his Paul Warma paraffin stove, see Chapter 67, which dated from the 1950s and which he used in his cabin. The price of paraffin went up sharply from 16p per gallon in November 1973 to 29p per gallon in March 1974. This was despite the price of paraffin being controlled at that time. Apparently, the average price of paraffin rose from around 21p per gallon in 1973 to 46-51p per gallon in 1979, see Chapter 108.
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