Fivequidaday's Blog

A real packed lunch

It’s my last week of £1-a-week lunches, and now, with going away tomorrow, I’ve got to do like thousands of children across the country, and have a real packed lunch. None of this making spaghetti on toast, or cooking a potato in the mircowave.

Which means my lunch for this week looks like this:

With no margarine. The bread’s pretty dry (so not looking forward to it on Friday…) and the cheese, well, isn’t really cheese. And it cost me 95p – I’m only getting pudding (digestives) because I had some money left last week, so splashed out in anticipation of not being able to afford anything else this week.

It’s a pretty sorry way to end another Lent – but at least for me it’s ending. As teaching unions ATL’s recent research shows, poverty is widespread in our schools, and can have a devastating impact on children’s ability to thrive and break out of the cycle of poverty. It’s a sad indictment of our society. Happy Easter!

None of my five a day

One thing that’s surprised me doing this challenge is how many different things I’ve managed to find to eat for under £1 a week: last week I bought a bag of pasta (18p) and pasta sauce (well admittedly mostly water, but only 27p); this past week I’ve been on instant mash (also 18p). But what costs is trying to add any semblance of fruit or veg to my lunch (for reference, school dinners now contain at least two portions of a child’s 5 a day).

Virtually all fresh fruit and veg sold in Sainsbury’s costs more than £1, so is instantly unaffordable. And it’s hard to shop in the market (not to mention that Chapel Market doesn’t run on a Monday, when I buy my week’s lunch), because you don’t know how much it’s going to cost until you come to pay for it, and it’s embarrassing if it turns out to be too expensive and you have to ask the stallholder to put it back. So that leaves tinned and frozen. Last week I splashed out on a tiny tin of peas, which at 29p cost more than any other component of my lunch, and had to be divided into fifths to last the week. They didn’t even taste good – I don’t know why I bothered.

This week I got lucky – because I managed to find some dented tins of tomatoes that we’re reduced to 19p each, rather than 31p, which meant I could afford two, rather than trying to stretch a single tin out all week. But otherwise it’s just stupid – a tin of veg costs as much of a packet of biscuits, but doesn’t taste as good and definitely doesn’t fill you up.

Stats consistently show that the poorest people in our society eat the worst diet, with the lowest consumption of fruit and veg, and are more likely to suffer from diet-related ill-health. It’s hardly surprising. But why do we allow it?

An extravagant week

It’s been wild! With a huge £1.18 (my weekly pound, plus 18p saved from previous weeks) burning a hole in my pocket, and only four days lunch to buy (my leftovers from last week tided me over til Tuesday), I had a blow-out on probably the most nutritious weeks lunches so far: baked (OK, microwaved) potatoes with coleslaw.

Here’s how it stacked up:
4 baking potates – 70p
1 tub coleslaw – 46p

Not exactly that filling (although the last few digestives purchased in week one helped there), and tedious by the end of the week – but a definite improvement on 10p instant noodles.

It sees me going into my third full week carrying over 2p, and exactly nothing left in my lunch cupboard. Criminal when you consider that Vodaphone’s £6bn unpaid tax bill could pay for more than 3bn school lunches – that’s enough for every primary school child who would have received a free meal prior to the June cuts to have one meal on every school day for 17 years. Never mind that there’s only twelve years of compulsory schooling…

Lunch so far

My favourite lunch....

I’m over a week into this year’s challenge. So far, this is what I’ve had:

Wed 9th: half a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce, 3 digestives
Thurs 10th: instant noodles, 3 digestives
Fri 11th: half a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce, 3 digestives

The first week I was pretty hungry, but spend just 47p of the 60p I had (spaghetti – 14p; noodles – 10p; digestives – 23p).

This past week I did a bit better: 95p got me a loaf of bread (47p), two tins of soup (17p each) and another tin of spaghetti (14p). And I still had some biscuits left over from the previous week, so managed the following:

Mon 14th: half a tin of tomato soup, 4 slices of bread, 3 digestives
Tues 15th: half a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce, 4 slices of bread, 3 digestives
Wed 16th: half a tin of tomato soup, 4 slices of bread, 3 digestives
Thurs 17th: half a tin of vegetable soup, 3 slices of bread, 3 digestives
Fri 18th: half a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce, 4 slices of bread

It’s pretty dull, but I’ve not been so hungry. And I’ve got three slices of bread and half a tin of soup left for tomorrow, which means I’ve got £1.18 for the remaining four lunches of the week – it might even be enough to buy some fruit!

2011: Another year, another challenge…

After last year’s challenge, I’ve struggled to come up with something to top it. With the public sector spending cuts already kicking in, and rapidly deepening I had no shortage of ideas – but had difficulty coming up with something that worked. Sure, I’d be happy to spend 6 weeks with no contact with the police, but that’s not really the point… In the end, one of the first things to bite the dust under the coalition last summer was my inspiration for this year.

Back in June, less than a month after being set up, the new Department for Education announced it was scrapping plans to extend free school meals to primary school children from low income working families. As a result, almost a million children living in poverty will miss out on a healthy hot meal during the school day. In their families, parents will somehow have to find, from tight budgets, the money to pay for some kind of lunch. So for the next six weeks, I’ll be eating my lunches from Monday to Friday on £1 a week, or 20p a day.

Finished!

Hurray!! I’ve made it! In fact I had more of a blow-out yesterday, spending my last five pounds on a couple of pints (one for me, one for long-suffering Tim) in the fabulous Fanny’s Ale House. Today my biggest indulgence has been topping up my phone.

I’m so glad it’s over, but reflecting on my challenge there have been some good things. It’s made me get to know my local area better, and visit places like Brixton Market and the Tate Britain which are practically on my doorstep, yet I never really appreciate. It’s been great for my mental arithmetic, and I’ve done lots more walking. It’s also made me appreciate the things I’ve got and have the financial freedom to do.

I know I’ve had it easy – much easier than for someone who was really having to survive on asylum support. I’ve spent nothing on basics like clothing, very little on transport (just three single bus journeys on top of visits to see family), and been able to spend a minimal amount on food because of the choice of shops and the market within walking distance of home. I’ve also had a support network of people looking out for me and slipping me the odd bit of free food or buying me a drink, the ability to speak English, and invaluable knowledge of all sorts of things, from where to buy the cheapest food, to bus routes and how to get cheap phone calls.

But it’s really opened my eyes to how much of a role hope and security can have on your quality of life – without knowing that there was an end in sight, and that it would be OK (the equivalent of an asylum seeker being granted leave to remain), I would have found the whole experience infinitely more difficult.

Thanks for following my blog. I’ve had some great conversations with people over the last few weeks, about what I’m doing, and about poverty and asylum issues in general. If you’d like to know more about refugee and asylum issues, check out the websites of some of the organisations that are part of the Still human still here coalition. Members of the Get fair campaign work on poverty more widely in the UK.

Living ghosts

Yesterday I arrived in Bradford, and felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I’d been able to pay for my coach ticket, survived the five-hour journey and virtually made it to the end of my challenge – today is the last day. Until Monday I’m staying with Tim’s family, so I no longer have to worry about whether I’ve got enough food to last the week, or how I’m going to have to cope with any unanticipated problems.

But staying with others also brings its own problems – earlier this week I attempted to make hot cross buns to bring up as a gift. They weren’t a huge success, coming out stodgy and slightly better done that I’d planned. I brought them anyway, not wanting to see them go to waste, and Tim’s Mum was kind enough to thank me for them, but now that I’m almost dependent on their hospitality, I feel I should have brought a proper token of my appreciation.

It reminds me of the destitution challenge set by the Arimathea Trust, which works with asylum seekers in Nottingham, and Church Action on Poverty. Here people have to live on only £2.50 and a basic food parcel, which is what failed asylum seekers (including those that are unable to return to their own country because it is unsafe), all government support having been cut, might get if they were lucky enough to be helped out by one of the charities that supports destitute asylum seekers. These people are effectively “air-brushed” out of existence, having no legal identity in the UK and no way of returning home. A best case scenario for these “living ghosts” is being given hospitality by someone in the refugee or wider community. Yet for most people, accepting hospitality with no way of being able to return it is very uncomfortable – certainly one of the hardest things I’ve found has been not being able to return favours when people have bought me a drink or given me food. The challenge has been taken by “honest cop” Lisa, who has blogged about her experience on Facebook - see what you think (though you need to be signed in to Facebook). Also check out the Still human still here campaign (no need to be on Facebook for this one).

General ineptitude

Just home from my boss’s leaving do. Turned up with £1.89, not even enough to buy him a drink, so instead had to pop across the road to Sainsburys to buy him a nice bottle of beer, leaving me with 10p. Luckily a couple of kind colleagues included me in rounds they were buying, so I didn’t have to sup tap water all evening.

It was a good thing, since the last day or two of general ineptitude on various people’s parts had left me in serious need of a beer to unwind. First there was the two phone calls I had to make to find out that the results of my blood test, or the sample itself, had got lost somewhere along the way, and that I’d have to ring back a third time later in the week to see if they’d found them. Then there was the two phone calls to the blood donation service that it took for them to tell me that I couldn’t give blood because I was waiting for results of a blood test, however routine it might be. And finally there was the something that someone sent me, which was 15p short on postage, and will therefore will cost me £1.15 to retrieve from the sorting office. Grrr!

These are all really small costs, but when you’re on £5 a day they all add up, and there’s nothing you can do about them except wish that someone had got things right the first time. But only 4 days and £20.08 to go. Roll on Easter!

Lunch

I’ve just had lunch at work: tinned spaghetti on toast. A colleague came over to see what I was eating, looking really unimpressed at my choice of meal. I explained that, at 11p (7p for half a tin of spaghetti and 4p for a couple of slices of bread) it was pretty good value. I then realise that my apple (£1 for 7 in the market) more than doubled the price of my meal.

A couple of colleagues asked why I couldn’t buy pasta or rice and cook something from scratch, but I’m sceptical that it would be as cheap. Then there’s the fact that rice and pasta are forming the basis of most of the meals I’m cooking at the moment. Couldn’t I at least have backed beans, I was asked. But baked beans are at least twice the price.

I suddenly got a glimpse of how people on low incomes feel when well-meaning but clueless people with no experience of poverty express their dissatisfaction at how the less well-off spend their meagre incomes.

Yes, I do have £2.20 left until Wednesday, so could technically afford a tin of beans. But it’s not nice to know that you haven’t got a penny to your name – all manner of unexpected events might call for some cash in the next 36 hours. As it is, I hadn’t factored into my week’s budget another colleagues leaving do tomorrow, so I’m going to have to turn up at that without enough to buy a drink. Being skint sucks.

Doing the maths

Early on in my challenge, someone asked me if I was going to give the money I’d saved living on £35 a week to charity. A short debate followed, about whether the point of the exercise was to raise money or awareness. In the end it concluded when I admitted that I didn’t know how much I usually spent (and therefore how much I would be saving), and asked whether the commenter would make a donation if I did.

But a rainy afternoon this weekend gave me time to consider how my £5 a day budget compares to the amount I usually spend. In the end I worked out, based on three of my not-entirely-randomly-selected bank statements from the last year, that I usually spend about £16.50 per day. This, like my £5 a day challenge, does not include rent and associated housing costs (council tax and utility bills) or regular donations to charity, nor the fees I’ve been paying to do my masters degree. It does include pretty much everything else: food, mobile phone, travel, clothes, going out, holidays, presents. In other words, for the last six weeks my basic disposable income has been less than a third of what it usually is. I think I do a pretty good job of living on the cheap normally – I don’t own a car or go on exotic holidays, I hate shopping and get most of my clothes from charity shops, and being someone who is vegetarian and mostly cooks from scratch, I probably spend less than average on food. So I imagine that I’ve found this challenge easier that many, if not most, British adults. (I’m basing this on the fact that, if I compare myself with averages for the UK population, based on the recent Hills’ Review of economic inequality, my weekly earnings come in at roughly the 45th percentile, i.e. 45% of the population have weekly earnings less than me; 55% have more (but bear in mind that I only work three days a week), while my individual income (net pay plus any benefits) comes in at the 65th percentile. Incidently, the Hills’ Review makes a pretty damning evaluation of the economic situation for refugees and asylum seekers – see p.248 of the report.)

What all this number crunching says to me is that asylum support is a pretty pathetically small amount of money to have to live off, even more so for any length of time. In case that wasn’t already pretty evident.