大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Jean Wilsons permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

My own memories are limited, as I wasn't born until late 1938. However I do remember the following:-

Favourite toys were:
* The button tin, full of treaured beautiful buttons.
* Dolly pegs, with wooden peg bodies, pipe-cleaner arms, painted faces and tiny clothes in which to dress them.
* Chalkstones, with which to draw on the pavement and make games.

Clothes were hard to come by and repaired or remade over and again. To my chagrin, mine were always dark coloured - to require less washing, thus saving soap and wear. Even my party dress was brown, with white ric rac decoration. How I longed for pink!

Rugs were "pegged", pieces of rag being pushed into lengths of sacking to cover part of the wood floor. This was the only carpeting we had.

I hardly knew sweets. True we had ration, but most sweets were sold only on the black market. We could only buy Liquorice root, aniseed ball and the like. Chocolate was something I only heard about. One day, after the war, every child in our school was told to bring a 1lb jam jar. The jars were filled with drinking chocolate powder. By the time I arrived home, the jar was almost empty! Although there was also a ration of sugar, it was never used to sweeten food or drink. We used nasty saccharin for that. The precious sugar was only used for preserves.

Our pet rabbits bred, but the numbers never grew. Granpa sadly explained that yet another had escaped - always on those days we had a nasty stew. Grandpa was my father-figure, as my father disappeared during the war. My only memory of his face is of a photograph.

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