大象传媒

"You didn鈥檛 have supermarkets like you鈥檝e got now. You had the Co-op, that was the only big shop in the town, but you patronised your village grocer. My mother had a village grocer, and local baker - because bread was rationed, but not till quite the end of the war, strange as it may seem that bread was rationed. You had units in your ration book called BUs. There was a song at the time: 鈥淚t Had to BU鈥�, and people used to sing that when they got a loaf of bread, which was rather you know, jollying people along mainly. Several things come to one鈥檚 mind 鈥� I know there was a naval family near my parents and one of the son鈥檚 had been away a lot and he was on leave. He鈥檇 got a bottle of whisky and he鈥檇 got it in a paper carrier bag, and has he got off the bus it feel through and smashed. All the whisky ran down the drain, and there was a little dog there that was trying to lick it up, which was very funny 鈥� but it wasn鈥檛 funny for the poor chap who鈥檇 lost the whisky. I can see his face now, it was just like thunder. Little things like that happen. [When you went along to the shop] whatever you had they鈥檇 take the coupons out. You still had to pay for it. Now and again when things were in short supply, and the rations were reduced 鈥� like the butter ration was an ounce a week 鈥� when you think of that now. In the summer it would be running away, you had to find a cool place to put it. There was one incident of [queuing up], a greengrocer鈥檚 鈥� that was the Co-op. They used to have probably their butcher鈥檚 shop, and then their grocer鈥檚 shop, and then their greengrocer鈥檚 shop on the end. They used to have a display of vegetables out front of the fruit and vegetable shop. I had a friend who used to work in the greengrocer鈥檚, and it was put round about bananas were coming. That particular day I had just got off the bus, and then I had a walk to where I was living, and the crowd of people that descended on her when she came out with the bananas was terrific. And when they鈥檇 finished she was standing there just in her petticoat, her underclothes 鈥� her overall which buttoned down the front, was simply torn off her to get at these bananas [laughs] and the people queued again to pay for them. That鈥檚 how things were. Like the orange incident where the children used to have one section a night."

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