The price of stockings

The price of stockings in 1956 was astronomical.  How do I know?  Well, I know because of my Uncle Dan, who at one stage in his life kept meticulous records of his living expenses (as well as diaries, where he detailed his day's activities).  Not that the stockings were for him, I should add - I suspect they were for his wife, Iris.  Anyway, I came across this book of his a while back which lists every expense, no matter how small,.  The pages you see here are from the ledger of January 1956, as is the diary:

1956, in 2022.  On FP4+ via the OM-1, 50mm lens.  On Foma 133 velvet fibre paper, thiourea toned.

So on the 9th January 1956, among other things, 2 shillings and 8 pence was spent on lunch, 15 shillings on theatre tickets and 17 shillings and 10 pence on stockings.  There were 20 shillings in the pound back then and a quick check on one of those inflation websites shows that the equivalent money to 17/10 in those days would be about £20.  I had to use Google but Mr Bezos' e-commerce company has a pair of silky black lace 15 denier stockings for sale at £3.99 (and if my wife is checking my web searches I hope she doesn't get the wrong idea).  It's hard to believe now but post-WWII rationing in the UK had only just ended 18 months earlier in 1954, so probably some things were still expensive and hard to get (I'm hazarding a guess that stockings were one of those things, since we have all heard stories about American GIs hitting on 'our local girls' with gifts of stockings during the war).  Coffee&biscuits, bread, cream and whiskey all feature regularly in my uncle's books, by the way - and grapefruit, for some reason.   Dan was Principal Lecturer at a teacher training college in Belfast and his wife a teacher, so they had good salaries coming in every month.  No children, so they only had themselves to feed and clothe. 

My Uncle's diaries are interesting in a 'nothing much happening' kind of way - more of a 'this is how we lived'.  On Wednesday Jan 1st, 1956 you might be able to read that as well as it being a frosty start and a raw, cold afternoon Dan was in two minds to go to a meeting of his local Probus Club.  His wife persuaded him to go (it was New Year's Day and she probably wanted him out of the house for a few hours) but when his mate Jack and him got to the hotel there were no staff on duty, no coffee and no central heating.  So it was back home for his coffee and to work on the Preceptory Accounts.  That would be the Royal Black Preceptory, a Protestant fraternity aligned with the Orange Order.  Dan liked his Clubs - he was also a big Freemason and more of that to come in a different post.

The French artefact is something I picked up years ago during a visit to a flea market in Northern France.  I liked the message and thought it might fit this scene. Unfortunately the glass front has come detached and I failed to notice it had slipped when taking the shot, so it looks a bit untidy.

If you're wondering why I'm a day late and a dollar short with this post it's 'cos yesterday my wife and I were travelling back from seeing our daughter in Oxford for a couple of days.  I completely forgot it was Thursday.  We had a lovely couple of days with her and the weather was very pleasant, with spring-like temperatures.  The same could not be said when we stepped off the plane in Belfast yesterday evening, when an icy blast of air hit reminded us that spring hasn't quite sprung yet here in Northern Ireland.