- Contributed by听
- CSV Media NI
- Location of story:听
- Belfast and the Irish Free State
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A6017113
- Contributed on:听
- 04 October 2005
This story is taken from an interview with [] at the Royal British legion, Bangor, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Anita Cochrane, transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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From the start, we couldn鈥檛 buy nylons. You could get them down south over the border. And my chum and I, we would go down. What you done to get those nylons, they were short of tea. And you would take maybe a packet of tea 鈥 a small amount of tea 鈥 over the border. Then you would go to a certain store and you would get to know the people, and say 鈥淚 want so many pair of nylons鈥, or then we could buy our shoes with stiletto heels, which we couldn鈥檛 buy in NI because they weren鈥檛 coming through. But all our style, we would go up, strip off what clothes we had, and put all new stuff on. And come back. Sometimes I would bring back maybe 3 pairs of shoes. A pair of stilettos on your coat. Put the heels down that way and that way. A pair on your waist and a pair on you.
[do you remember what shop it was?]
Cleary鈥檚. We had a wonderful time, I always had lovely shoes and lovely nylons.
[were you afraid of getting caught?]
Many many times. They would take you out. Mostly people were going up for sugar. Which you couldn鈥檛 get. But my chum and I, we would go up for the fancy gear and that. Many an odd time my sister-in-law would say 鈥測ou better come out, because you have a guilty face鈥. And there was me sitting, used to say 鈥測es - because your heels were sitting out like that, and the Customs officer was coming in!鈥
[you must have been the best-dressed woman in belfast]
one time I went down, and I had my mother鈥檚 identity card. We had ID cards then. Her age was on that. She had her mother鈥檚. but the age was on it. We looked very young. Anybody looking at us would have known the dates.
[did you not have your own ID cards?]
No. We had ration books, but that was it.
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