大象传媒

There was a terrible lack of food. Before the war my mother hoarded up sugar and sweets and tinned food, but by 1941 this had just about all gone. One day I found the sweet jar behind a large easy chair and unfortunately having picked it up, I dropped it and broke the jar lid and my secret supply died out as I had to confess and I got into trouble. I remember coming home from school hungry, mixing dried egg powder with water and making a big pancake out of it. It was good. I remember gazing in a shop window in Bailgate near the church (it has gone now) staring at a 3D pattern of Oxo cubes. We went in and bought one each and walked down the street eating little bits off it. This became a regular source of nourishment.

I sat in deep holes the Home Guard had dug eating sticks of rhubarb dipped into little pots of sugar (if we were lucky). I scrounged for apples, grew vegetables in Eastgate school garden. The food mother made more by mixing the margarine and butter with cornflour. She made mintoes out of dried milk and peppermint essence, banana cream out of boiled parsnips and banana essence. Almond icing out of semolina, cake crumbs and almond essence. She had a recipe for war time cake using little dried fruit.

As children we forgot all about sweets and chocolate, ice creams, bananas, oranges, but we grew our own raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries. We kept our own chickens and rabbits which eventually ended up on the table. Dad had an allotment on which he grew vegetables.

We went on holidays to my auntie and uncle at Ellingstring. They had a whippet dog who was excellent at catching rabbits. Wee skinned them and posted them back to friends in Lincoln. Auntie kept the village shop and post office and she had big slabs of margarine, lard and cheese which all had to be cut up and weighed precisely, else someone in the village had to go short.

Sugar came in big blue bags and dried fruit in boxes. Getting to Ellingstring was quite a problem in 1940 and 1941. We used our car (Dad had saved the petrol). I remember stopping in Knaresborough and asking if it was Knaresborough, there were no sign posts, and being told yes. It took us from early morning to 6/7 at night to get there. Now I can do it on 1and half to 2 up the A1.

In later years we went by crowded trains and full buses, coming home once we had to cadge a lift in a farm vehicle to Ripon, because the bus had gone past us full and we had to get home.

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