大象传媒

This is a follow up to my story about Mr and Mrs Kingdom:

After Mick and I were rejected as an inconvenience by Mrs Guy,I was passed on to a Mr and Mrs Parker of 42 Hughes Avenue, Penn,Wolverhampton,and Mick to another family living in the same road(we had another foster parent in between,but the less said about her and her horrible son,the better).

The country was on sweet rationing at that time,but I don't remember ever having had sweets before I was evacuated,so rationing was not a great problem for me,except,that when I got my ration,and in spite of warnings from Mrs Parker that I wouldn't get any more until next week,I scoffed the lot immediately-such was the novelty.

There was a newspaper shop in Penn,within walking distance of the Parker's that had a dispensing machine outside.

It probably dispensed cigarettes,but my interest in it was that-at a time of sweet rationing it also dispensed a chocolate bar called Exlax.I would supplement my sweet rationing with Exlax from the machine.
I only learned much later that Exlax was a
laxative chocolate!

I was returned to London after the V2's ceased to be a problem, and later moved to the Childs Hill end of Finchley Rd.

Sweets were still on ration,but I had survived rationing with Exlax and something called Nipits,which were some form of cough remedy available from Maynards and Woolworths.

The day that sweets came off ration ,I got up early to go to Maynards- the sweetshop on the corner of Finchley Rd and Cricklewood Lane,as near to opening time as possible,so that I could gorge myself on sweets bought with my saved up pocket money.

When I entered the shop,the shelves were bare,all of the glass jars full of sweets that I had lusted after were gone,there was nothing left but Nipits!

The lady in the shop told me that when the shop opened that morning,it had been completely cleared by a number of people who had arrived in cars -some chauffeur driven-from Golders Green.She said that she knew who they were,and wouldnt tell me,but it was pretty disgraceful,she said,because we in the shop thought that today would be a kid's day.

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