The Maesyffynnon Chocolate Bar Scam
In Trapp in 1966, if you wanted to get anywhere, you walked. There was no public transport to speak of, aside from the school bus at 8 a.m. and a "shopping bus" that ran on market days. If you didn't have a car and didn't want to walk, you were, to put it mildly, buggered.
Our new home, Maesyffynnon, was about half a mile from the village shop. My mother, ever resourceful, quickly came to an agreement with the shopkeeper so she could run a "bill" and buy things on tick, settling up when my father got paid. This meant frequent trips for us kids. It was a proper bit of exercise, certainly not the short walk down to the shops on Woodford Road in Blaen y Maes, nor the even shorter hop to Doris Murphy's corner shop back on Wern Fawr Road.
Of course, this "on tick" system presented an opportunity that was too good for my younger self to pass up. It didn't take long for me to get up to my old tricks.
Soon, I was adding items to the bill that my mother hadn't ordered. For me, it was always Mars Bars or Bounties. I think Peter and David used their ill-gotten credit for cigarettes. My logic was that buying just one chocolate bar for myself would look suspicious, as the shopkeeper knew there were five of us kids. So, to be less conspicuous, I'd confidently ask for five.
The long walk home had its advantages. It gave me ample time to devour the evidence before I reached the front door. I could normally manage to eat three. The other two I'd hide somewhere, sneaking off to the derelict car in the garden later to finish them. Our dog, Cindy, loved these trips and was always more than happy to help me with the Mars Bars. (I've since learned that chocolate is toxic for dogs, but whether it was the low quality of 1960s chocolate or just Cindy's cast-iron stomach, she never suffered any ill effects.)
Funnily enough, I was never caught. Not once. To this day, I'm not sure if my mother was just too busy or too lazy to check the bill properly, or if, in a family of seven, a few extra chocolate bars just disappeared into the general chaos without a trace.