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My Sisters and I were brought up never to lie and especially never to steal. But Mother had a way of fiddling honestly. She would never have stolen but she had a way of twisting the system to keep us going until the next of her payments were due.

One of the harmless fiddles she practiced was a great source of amusement to myself and my younger sister.

We had prepaid gas and electric meters which were fed with shilling coins. This was prior to our changing to decimalisation in 1972. Shillings were worth 12 pennies and there were 20 shillings in a pound.

Prior to my earliest memories, my Mother told me, the gas and electric were "wound on". Now, I don't know if this was the first ever prepayment meter for those that couldn't afford to pay in large lump sums, or if it was the normal way to pay for energy, but from what I could gather the gas/electric man would turn up once a month and "wind" the meter to allow the amount of energy one prepaid for on the day. I would imagine that if one ran out early one could call the chap in to "wind" on some more.

But by the time I was old enough to remember we had prepayment meters that took shilling pieces.

Feeding the meter at the beginning of the week was fine as Mum used to draw her money on a Monday, but towards the end of the week Mum's purse would be pretty empty and one thing she would never do is go without gas or electricity. I can honestly never remember not having either, except when the light would go and we would be scrabbling around to feed the meter.

The light going out was a normal occurrence as Mother very seldom put more than one coin in the meter at a time. This I could understand as it was a way to keep track of how much money she would need to keep us in light and gas until she got paid again. Each time the lights would go out there would be a feeling around for Mum's purse. The emptying of the purse and the feeling for the right size coin in the dark. Mostly this would be done by the light of the fire or by the light of the gas jets in the kitchen.

Towards the end of the week it was inevitable, especially during the winter periods, that Mum would be running out of cash and the little cash she did have would be needed for food, not light and heating.

As I have stated above, I never remember us running out of gas or electricity but Mum did run out of cash. So how did she manage to feed the meters with no money???

The answer to this was absolutely brilliant.

In those days, everything sold in Woolworths cost 6d (6 pennies) - 2 x 6d = 1 shilling. Woolworths was known as the 6 penny store. One could buy such things as a dinner set there, but each cup, each saucer etc., individually would cost 6 pence each. It was as simple as that.

On the toy counter in the choice of pink or blue one could buy a little plastic, miniature tea sets. For one 6 penny piece one got 4 tiny cups, 4 weenie saucers and 4 plates which were the exact size of a shilling piece.

I think by now you are getting the picture of what would happen to the plates. Yup, my sister and I would be given a set of miniature cups and saucers to play with, minus the plates.

The plates would not fit into the meter slot as they were. Mum needed to file them down around the edges to correct the tiny size difference and to make them smooth and flat enough to go easily into the meter. She had an extremely large file for this use and my Sister and I would sit and watch her as she did it, and sometimes we were even allowed to have a go at filing them ourselves. Under the watchful eye of Mother of course, because one wrong slip and that particular plate would have been worth nothing.

2 packets of plastic toy tea sets would cost one shilling but Mum would get 8 shillings worth of gas/electricity out of it. That would keep us going until Mondays' payday.

I can now hear you thinking - but what happened when the chaps would come to open the meters?

This was the fun bit. I used to love the meter man coming to empty out the meters. I loved to watch him count up the cash and then see how much rebate Mum would get. Rebate day was always a fun day as some of this extra cash coming into the house would always go on some sweets and a bottle of lemonade for the evening for us kids. If extra cash arrived in any form there was always a treat in it for us as well as Mum having a little extra in her purse.

For those of you that have never seen a prepayment meter, let alone know what the heck getting rebate has to do with it, the explanation is this.....

Not only did one have to pay for the gas/electricity, but with a prepayment meter came the price of renting the meter. Or rather the charges laid upon us to pay for the wages of the poor buggers that used to have to come around emptying them out.

So to make sure there was enough cash in the meters for the rental as well as any electricity paid for, part of each shilling inserted into the machine went towards the charges. Depending on how much fuel one had used and paid for, any monies above and beyond the quarterly charge were handed back to the customer there and then.

In our case, especially in the winter, our rebate would consist of part shillings and part plastic. So you see what I mean by an honest fiddle??

I do remember one time the electricity man actually going red with frustration which had us killing ourselves with laughter after he had gone.

Penny and I had been watching the man empty the meter on the table and counting out the coins/plastic while Mum was in the kitchen making him a cup of tea. I was watching him shake his head, do a bit of tutting over the fact that there seemed to be more plastic than cash.

Just as he had got everything into neat little piles, Mum merrily bounces in from the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea for the chap, big smile on her face and asking, "How much rebate do I have?"

The chap went red in the face, saying "Rebate, Rebate, it's all bloody plastic"

I personally think he was new to the job. He obviously wasn't very knowledgeable about coping financially when poor but he also had never come across my Mother before. But oh my did he give us a laugh, and to this day, even as I write this I am laughing at remembering that poor man's face when counting out all that plastic.

Funnily enough on that day, there was still enough rebate, (in coins) to treat us to a little extra that night.

Some electric/gas collectors would take away the plastic plates thinking that, that would stop Mum using them again (silly buggers) but those that were regular callers to our house would give the plastic plates back along with any coins that came as rebate. They were the ones that knew there was always a cup of tea, a biscuit or home made cake waiting for them at our house. No one came to our house without having a cup of tea before they left.