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I was born in 1938 living in Olton Solihull. I lived with my mother and Uncle as my father died in 1940. My mother took in lodgers who came from Whitby they worked at the Rover Works building tanks. I can remember putting the black out shutters up in the evenings also going to the Air raid shelter taking my doll and gas mask, being wrapped up in a grey army blanket. Also I do remember two houses off Castle Lane being bombed.

I used to go shopping with my mother to the Co-op in Olton Hollow using our coupons, I had my first banana from the shops at Castle lane having to use one of the coupons. Also we used to buy yeast to make our own bread, I remember it rising in the airing cupboard. Also my mother would make toffee out of treacle which I loved sometimes it was black treacle, which I didn’t like. We grew vegetables in the garden, also we had fruit trees, Apple, grooseberries, blackcurrants. My mother would bottle the fruit. I also remember digging up the vegetables for our use, my Uncle would swap our vegetables for fresh eggs as we used to have dried egg powder, a real treat having a fresh egg. We had rabbits, I can remember my Uncle killing one for our dinner. Other people in the street had chickens and two people had pigs, we used to go and see them being slaughtered.

I had an Aunt in Shirley, she worked at a Canning factory on Cranmore Estate, she would sort the bad beans out before being canned. I remember Christmas we would carry our food in bags along with our plates, knives and forks, we would walk from Olton to my Aunt's home carrying our chairs with us. When you got tired you would put the chair down and have a rest, to this day I still have my chair. My mother and I did everything together, in the winter she would get old coats and we would cut them up into strips to peg mats for the hearth and by the beds. I always made my own rug to put by my bed.

I attended Chapel Fields school in Olton. I remember taking an empty jam jar to school which was filled with powdered drinking chocolate.

I can remember that we all used to help one another in the street, for we were mostly women and children, not many men around. We used to put all the peelings and scrap food into a bin in the road which was collected for the pigs. The children would play in the street. We would go to Olton and Acocks Green Cinema to see the films having to walk both ways as there was no buses.

At the end of the war I had a dress made out of a Union Jack flag we had a street party with a bonfire in the street. I still have a photo of the that occasion. Great excitement when my friends’ fathers came home from the war.

I distinctly remember being hungry all the time.

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This story was contributed by Solihull Heritage & Local Studies Service, Solihull Libraries by kind permission of the original contributor. It was originally contributed to Solihull Heritage & Local Studies Service's collection in 2005 (Ref: NC Solihull Historical: Reminiscences 2005/10).

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