Taken from my book If Only Suomi
"He
decided to check out the prices in a local food store.
"Bread, ten pence a loaf. English money was already decimalised. The coins were halfpenny, one pence, two pence, five and tens and a fifty pence coin. Notes were £1, £5 and £10. Probably larger denominations but not so common.
"Milk was five pence; a jar of coffee for thirty pence; a box of Cornflakes for eleven pence; a dozen eggs for twenty; two pounds of sugar ten pence; crisps were three pence a bag. He bought a bag. It had the old little blue bag of salt in.
"But
then again, he thought, I had only earned twenty pounds a week for
five days and Saturday morning.
"His
grant at UEA* had been ten pounds a week and his rent three of four.
And that was just for thirty weeks each year; he had to be looked
after by his parents or find a summer job. Out of that he had to buy
his food and drink, clothes, transport, books and entertainment. But
he had gotten through it. He went back to the train station to drink
some more tea."
*University of East Anglia
