大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a Volunteer from Reading on behalf of Mr Tony Watts and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Watts fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived with my grandparents during the war and had lots of responsibilities in helping to run the house, almost all of which involved queuing.

Every household seemed to have a homemade cart made of wood and pram wheels and if there was a rumour that a coal yard had some coal in we had to take the cart and stand in line for a bag of coal, which would sometimes take hours.

We also used the cart to help my grandfather on his allotment, as the cart carried all the tools and vegetables. To get to the allotment we had to cross by Berkley Avenue just outside the town centre. During the war this was a main convoy route for the army and U.S. forces. Sometimes it was impossible to cross this road because of the length of the convoy.

My grandparents kept chickens and rabbits in the back garden for eggs and meat and it was my job to clean out the rabbit hutches, we took this across to the allotment for manure.

I also had to take the rabbit skins, empty jam jars and old rags to a warehouse on the Oxford Road where you got money depending on what you took and the weight of it.

One family where we lived used to breed pigs on their allotment. They鈥檇 put dustbins in their wooden cart and go round collecting any leftovers from the neighbours. The mother of the family had a big copper in the back yard where she鈥檇 boil up all the leftovers into swill which they鈥檇 take up the allotment to feed the pigs.

If there was a pig that was a bit sickly they鈥檇 bring it to my Gran to nurse back to health. She kept it in the house to keep warm and feed it with a bottle. Then we鈥檇 keep it in the rabbit run until it was strong enough to go back with the rest of the pigs. We always got a big cut of pork at Christmas.

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