大象传媒

One thing, which had an immediate impact on children鈥檚 activities was the blackout. In the Wintertime it was dark when we got home from school and by the time we had our tea it was so dark that you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. This was because all windows were covered in thick black material and all the streetlights were off. My Mother used to let us play outdoors from 5pm to 6pm. Our favourite games were 鈥渉ide and seek鈥� and 鈥渒ick off can鈥�. In the evening we read books, played with games or sang whilst Mother accompanied us on the piano.

Sweet rationing was based on 4-week periods and in our family 4 oz per week gave us 2oz of sweets to last from Monday to Friday and 2oz for over the weekend. To supplement our sweets we used to eat liquorice root, cooking apples when they were available and we even ate cinnamon sticks until the chemist鈥檚 shop sold out of them. If we were lucky we managed to buy Nippets or Zubes, which were cough sweets, but these were usually sold 鈥榰nder the counter鈥�.

From the age of seven it was my job to go to the shops and being the youngest shopper I soon endeared myself with most of the shopkeepers. This meant I was often told 鈥渨e have such and such in today鈥� and my Mother made sure I was carrying extra money to buy things on my own decision. I soon became very adept at knowing what to get and what to refuse. Eggs were the hardest things to buy, you could go several weeks without eggs and then you would get 6 weeks of eggs altoghter. With four of us in the family it meant I had to carefully carry up to 24 eggs home and even then, when you came to use them, there was one or two bad. When eggs were not available Mother used to use powdered egg and omelettes made from this were delicious.

School dinners were terrible. They were cooked at a central kitchen and delivered to the school in insulated containers. The local traders supplied the kitchens, the lowest tenders getting the contracts, and they used the kitchens to offload food, which they could not sell in their shops. Outer leaves of cabbages, woody carrots and meat, which was mostly fat and gristle. Once a week we could get tapioca (which we called frog spawn) as a pudding and I could not understand how there was so much of this in the country when food was hard to import!

Because I was so used to doing the shopping, I also used to shop for some of the neighbours. They used to reward me with an empty pop bottle on which I could claim the two-pence deposit. As I could get into the pictures for four-pence, this used to see me going to the cinema three times a week. Those were the good old days when we could go to the pictures on two empty bottles.

The travelling fair used to still come during the war. The main one was Tucker鈥檚 Fair and as we were close friends of the Tucker family, I used to get free rides. It only came once in the Summer months and used to close early because of the blackout. The larger trucks were pulled by steam traction engines and after the war Scammel lorries, which were bought from Army surplus, replace these. We also had a visit by Ghandi鈥檚 Circus which was a small family run circus and as it was during the school Summer holidays, I managed to get a part time job grooming the animals and other odd jobs. I did it for the week they were with us and got the princely sum of two shillings and six pence. But it wasn鈥檛 the money but the prestige with the other children, which made it worthwhile.

Do I remember VE Day? Of course I do. What I remember is that fireworks were on sale but my Mother said she could not afford them so I didn鈥檛 get any. On that morning I met a lad of 7 years of age who asked me if I would set his fireworks off as his dad was working the afternoon shift and his mother wouldn鈥檛 let him light them and she was scared to set them off. I went to his house at 6pm and he had a large biscuit tin full of fireworks and a large bundle of skyrockets. I had a glorious time!

Disclaimer: Submitted by Geraldine Spoors at Stanley Library on behalf of Michael McHugh

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