大象传媒

The civic restaurant was opened in the town hall in Worcester to get people to eat proper balanced meals during the war as meat was in short supply. We used to go three times a week, usually on Monday and Tuesday with a friend Ann Biggs and with my husbands sister Selina and her children (if she could afford it), and again on Friday with my husband. I would have to walk down from Avon Road with the Marmit pram because I had a baby. I had to go past the Gas works which was awful when they tipped out the coke as I would get covered in coke dust. I sometimes saw women from Tolladine collecting bags of coke in their prams as it was cheaper than coal at 6d a bag. Sometimes to avoid this I would catch a midland red bus into town, which cost 1d. On Fridays I would meet my husband Cyril after work at Heenan and Froude and go shopping before going for dinner at the Civic.

It was a popular and busy place but large enough not to get too crowded. Each table would seat six people so we often sat with people we didn't know. We would collect our meals which were served on a plate at a bar near to the entrance. The women serving wore green pinnies and caps like a uniform. Meals were served between 12pm and 2.30pm. There wasn't a menu as such but a set meal and no pudding for 1/6 or 1/9d depending on what it was. There was cottage pie, mince, steak and kidney pie, faggots and mushy peas, sausage and mash or toad in the hole with lots of vegetables like cabbage, carrots, cauliflower and peas (often dried). Sometimes there was stew though not very often. You could also get a cup of tea. They were open all week and were also open for an evening meal on Saturday's.

Most other restaurants couldn't trade unless they could get a meat allowance, like the Star Hotel in Foregate Street. But you had to be better off to eat at these places as meals cost 2/- or even 3/- each, so the Civic provided an affordable and enjoyable alternative for many people at a time when meat and good food was hard to come by.

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