The Black Economy

But then – even back in those wild and heady days – no-one would have dared to start a sentence with the word 'but'. However, little did she care for the stuffy old rules of grammar and usage, she was wild and free and had little interest in what others thought grammatically correct, as well as having quite an interesting theory about the use of underwear, which she regarded as even more strict and constricting than the use of punctuation.

A couple of facts that made both her and her frequent love letters more than a little interesting.

We met long before this country was ravaged by the horrors of the VAT inspectors, waging their campaign of terror across this once-free land as invoices and cash books fell to their mighty onslaughts while we – the poor and the dispossessed - trembled and huddled in fear.

Then, things changed

It was a time of revolution, not just in the use of semi-colons and underwear, but in how we lived our lives and the uses to which we could put a watermelon. I had the flippers and the snorkel and she had the ukulele, so we would spend many a summer evening together up on the hillside, well away from the gangs of prowling VAT inspectors as they rampaged from village to out-of-town retail emporium.

Still, though, we were young and wild and free – although she was not that free, but – as away of avoiding the dread attentions of the despised VAT Inspectors was always willing to demonstrate her revolutionary approach to the wearing of underwear in return for cash in hand.