Well said that man! You sound like the Big Brother I never had. 
Most of the stuff you said sounds similar to myself, but you are a generation before me with all the talk of 4d and all.
I am from the generation where you got four fruit salad/mojos/blackjacks for a new penny.
I never got to spend a threppenny bit, although I used to find them down the back of my Nan’s (bottomless) sofa all the time.
You had to mind your teeth for the old sixpences that used to end up in the Christmas pud…
For some reason, I remember still being able to spend them long after decimalization. 2.5p with which you could buy no less than TEN of the above sweets in a “corner shop” that would be on MANY street corners back then.
I’m also perhaps the last generation to learn trucking on a crash gear box needing double de-clutching and the like.
Cabs were cold, uncomfortable affairs where you felt every pothole doing damage to your brownhole, if one’s observance that “older drivers always seemed to have chalfonts all the time” was accurate…
I got into a boys grammar, just as the recently-taken-over-by-Labour town hall cut funding to such an extend that we were sharing a book between two or even three people, and expensive materials had to be returned in scrap form (or “poured back into the bottle” in Chemistry class) to make ends meet for the school.
There was never much problem with “shortage of staff” in those days though, with teachers on the whole “Strict, but Fair”. None of this “indoctination” crap had got started, until after I left.
Are there any of you lot out there who can name anyone in these pics?
(I’m not in them, but these were the only pics of the school I went to I could find floating around…)
I do recognize some of the Teachers - but none of the lads, so I’m guessing these pics were taken at some point after I left, but before some of the masters present here started dying off, such as Mr Rogers (2nd picture, Leftmost teacher, 2nd row from bottom)
