Thrift by Ronald Mackay
Some time ago, so I have heard, a headline in the Aberdeen morning paper announced: “Two mini-cabs collide in Union Street. None of the 15 passengers seriously hurt”.
Scots are widely known for their thrift. Aberdonians have the reputation of being the most frugal.
As an undergraduate at Aberdeen University in the early ’60s, I practiced thrift out of necessity as did most students at that time. As toddlers, we learned to save when our first present was a piggy bank into which we slipped the sixpenny pieces received from uncles and aunts on birthdays and at Christmas. Later we learned to protect our shoes, shirts and coats so that as we grew out of them, they could be handed down to the next child in line. As teenagers, we started our first part-time job and learned not to spend our earnings but bank them for a rainy day.
During university term time, most of us had just enough money to keep body and soul together. We lived frugally in shared accommodation, walked to class, and made our own meals from the least expensive items in shared, unheated, basement flats.
That was the norm. We took pride in the knowledge that we were each making an investment in our future.
Most students spent summer, winter and spring vacations working in order to supplement the following year’s expenses. In summer, when the tourist season was at its height in the Scottish Highlands, students commonly worked in hotels as cleaners, chambermaids, kitchen porters and waiters. Or we picked fruit -- strawberries in June, raspberries in July and for the rest of the season the most difficult of all – blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries. The most fortunate of us found work rouging tatties. That involved walking miles up and down the rows in potato fields to identify and remove the rogues -- abnormal plants or a variety other than that which the farmer was growing for seed. During winter vacation, we sought work as temporary postal workers to help the Post Office cope with the Christmas and New Year mail. Over Easter, those with enough energy and enthusiasm found work on farms hoeing the weeds out of turnip fields. Long arduous days but payment was by the acre, so the incentive was great.
We accepted work not as a hardship but as the natural consequence of our choice to study at university instead of joining the workforce directly from school. Shrewd and conscientious parents drummed into us that present sacrifices were necessary if we were to enjoy future gains.
I was among those students who had least money during term time. The reason was simple. Students could receive small grants from their local government but the amount awarded was linked to parental earnings. The less your parents earned, the more likely you were to warrant a grant and the larger it might be. Unfortunately, both my parents worked and they were separated. My father saw no reason for education beyond the age of 15 and deplored my ambition. My mother lived in the expensive city of London and her earnings barely covered her own needs. Nevertheless, my local government summed the income of both my parents and ruled that I was ineligible for any grant.
I was resourceful, however, and willing to turn my hand to anything so I sought out the most highly paid jobs in advance. When term came to an end, I was ready to step into a job that paid satisfactorily well and allowed me to save for the following year. Despite these earnings and savings, I had to keep within a strict budget of five pounds sterling a week during each university term.
One of my thrift strategies saving on food. The fish dock and market were only half a mile from the apartment in which I shared a cold basement room. Fish were unloaded from the seine-netters and trawlers on the quayside into wooden boxes lined with broken ice. As the stacks of boxes were auctioned off and dragged to the waiting fishmongers’ vans or trucks, the occasional fish would slip out onto the concrete. It was an unspoken rule that any member of the public desperate enough to be present at the pre-dawn sale could retrieve a fallen fish free of charge.
As a regular, I came to be on nodding terms with the porters who filled and skidded the boxes to the auctioneer and then loaded them onto trucks for those who had purchased them.
For me, a free fish any day of the week, could make the difference between my having to spend Saturday night alone or with friends in the warm fellowship of the Student Union, lingering over a pint.
Early one Saturday morning, I arrived at the fish market to find that the auction was over owing to a meagre catch following stormy weather. There wasn’t a single fish to be found on the floor.
As he passed, one busy porter saw the disappointment in my eyes. In his broad Doric brogue, he called out to a fellow porter in the act of hauling away the last of full boxes to be loaded into a fishmonger’s van.
“Gie one o’ thay boxes a kick so the laddie can hae a fish to tak hame tae his cat.”
Obligingly, the burly porter gave a resounding kick at the last box. Out popped a plump black and silvery haddock onto the icy concrete. Immediately, I bent, picked it up and popped it into my plastic bag.
As I straightened up, I gave both porters a look of genuine appreciation. The porter who’d given the order returned my gesture with a nod and a knowing wink.
His gesture said, I can see that a growing lad like you is after a decent meal, so here it is. Take it. May it fill your belly!
Instinctively I knew that his response arose from the warm Aberdonian habit of feeling empathy for another in need. In addition, I recognized something greater, that empathy is the source from which all of mankind’s better impulses flow.
Might it be that those who have experienced the need for thrift, are able to recognize a fellow in need more readily?
Aberdeen fishing trawlers
Aberdeen used to be one of Scotland's main fishing ports
