1st ABer:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
2nd ABer:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea
3rd ABer:
A cup o' cold tea
1st ABer:
Without milk or sugar
3rd ABer:
Or tea
4th ABer:
In a cracked cup, an' all
1st ABer:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper
2nd ABer:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth
3rd ABer:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor
4th ABer:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son"
1st ABer:
Aye, 'e was right
4th ABer:
Aye, 'e was
1st ABer:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof
2nd ABer:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling
3rd ABer:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
4th ABer:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh
1st ABer:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us
2nd ABer:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake
3rd ABer:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road
4th ABer:
Cardboard box?
3rd ABer:
Aye
4th ABer:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt
2nd ABer:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
3rd ABer:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife
1st ABer:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah
4th ABer:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ... they won't believe you
ALL:
They won't!