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Childhood wartime memories of living in Queen鈥檚 Park, Bedford Part Two 鈥� Rationing and 鈥榤aking do鈥�.

Part two of an oral history interview with Mr. Richard J. Hughes conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

鈥淭hen of course rationing started so we had ration books. You had meat, you had bread, you had cheese, you had eggs, you had personal points if there were any to have to buy sweets or chocolate. You had clothing coupons to buy clothes. You had coupons to buy household equipment. We didn鈥檛 have eggs because if you kept chickens, which we used to do, instead of your egg ration you could have corn and bran to feed your chickens. So we used to have corn and bran for our chickens and go without the eggs, we got a lot more eggs than we would have done. And in them days people, we were a big family but none of us really liked milk so milk was rationed, we perhaps had three pints a day so another family would have something they didn鈥檛 like and we would exchange. People would exchange on a regular basis you know milk for something or cheese for something. There was ever such a good spirit in them days of helping.

My mum had a gas cooker but to wash the clothes she had to have a fire and a copper and Mondays was all day washing. I could never understand washing, how they used to put a blue bag in and get white washing that always fascinated me. They used to have one of these Reckitts little blue bag and put in and the washing came out snow white and as a child I could never understand that. Not that we had a lot of clothes. I used to go to school in my sisters worn out Observer Corp jacket that she had. I never had a pair of shoes until I started work. I always had boots because they believed that it supported your ankles and my father used to put Blakies on the heels and about a thousand studs, we used to go to school like a troop of Cavalry. When it was snow and ice you could slide along on the snow and ice. Lots of things were handed down. Well, A, you couldn鈥檛 get them, there wasn鈥檛 clothes to have anyway and B, having five in the family, we weren鈥檛 sort of on the bread line but we weren鈥檛 well off.

I remember I used to hate Saturday mornings. Every Saturday morning the whole family apart from dad who was at work we had to get up about seven o鈥檆lock and be up the town. One of us, there was a shop in Midland Road called Pontins, a butchers shop. My sister had to go and queue at Saxbys, my brother went and queued at Sainsburys, my mother went and queued at Thompsons the butchers and every Saturday we used to queue up to get half a pound of sausages or two ounces of corned beef. There was like an underground 鈥� someone would come and say so and so has got so and so and everybody would rush to that shop and queue up. Also when we were children I can remember too we would go and queue for somebody else, somebody old or a bit frail. We would go and queue for them and then by the time the shop opened they would come and take our place which we had saved for them.

Every day before I went to school I used to run errands for about six people. I used to be up at seven o鈥檆lock every morning and go, mostly old people, go and get them potatoes from somewhere, a cabbage, a loaf of bread, used to get a h鈥檖enny from one and a penny from another. We did that for years.

It was a struggle but having seven in the family we got sort of reasonable amounts. I can remember you had to be registered at a shop, we were registered with the Co-op in Ford End Road and you had to be registered with the butcher. But there was lots of vegetables, potatoes, carrots, them sort of things, there was no rationing there. So we tended to have lots of hot pots were you could have a little bit of meat to give it a taste and lots of vegetables to give it volume, which were filling. And of course in the summer time we used to go blackberrying. But you see nobody had a fridge in them days so you couldn鈥檛, we had to bottle stuff in Kilner jars. Everybody used to pickle onions, they used to pickle gherkins, pickle eggs, everything was done in the Kilner jars and everybody鈥檚 pantry was under the stairs so we used to have a thick marble slab and like your butter and your bacon was put on this. But some people had a little thing outside the back door with little grill on it to keep the flies out and they kept stuff outside but of course in the summer time you couldn鈥檛 do that.

Another advantage which as children we liked was they had double summer time all through the war so instead of putting the clocks back one hour they put them back two hours so it would be still light 鈥榯il 12 o鈥檆lock at night. It was darker in the mornings but they done it for farmers so they had longer in daylight hours to work. It changed but it never went back to proper time, it went back an hour so that we were always an hour out but in the summer time it was two hours different.

Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, we used to collect rose hips. You know dog roses, they have the red rose hips, we used to collect those so that they could make Rose Hip syrup for babies. I think it was arranged through the school but we used to do that on a regular basis, we used to go and get these. We collected them along all around Bromham and all around here and in all the fields over Biddenham. It took a long time to get a pound of rose hips but we used to do that. I鈥檒l tell you another thing we used to do as well, I remember, we used to collect acorns for pigs. Because pigs like eating acorns. And we used to go and collect them and you want a lot of acorns to make anything because they are ever so light but we used to do that. And keeping your own chickens as well, we had to go gleaning all around Biddenham. When they grew corn they used to cut the corn and stook it up and then when they had collected you was allowed to go gleaning, picking up ears of corn. The whole family would go. Wed have a couple of bottles of cold tea and a couple of sandwiches and spend the whole day going round this field picking up ears of corn. We used to have a bag. We had a great big bag full of them in the end because as I say there were sometimes seven of us doing it, perhaps on a Sunday dad would come and there would be seven of us doing it. Then you had to take it home, you had to winnow it, rub it in your hands then blow the chaff off, it was quite a performance but it was well worth it. We didn鈥檛 think much to doing it but!

Another funny thing too was the Fish and Chip shop. We lived only about 50 yards from Bridgeman鈥檚 Fish and Chip shop. And when you went to get fish and chips everything was short so they didn鈥檛 have any paper bags or anything so you had to take your own dish. And they used to open at five o鈥檆lock and you started queuing about four so you know there were about 50 of you in the queue and as it got near to your turn you gave Mr. Bridgeman your dish. He put it on top of the fryer so that by the time you got there your chips went in that and they were hot and you could rush home and they were still hot. Bridgeman鈥檚 fish and chips were the best in the world! But he used to make us laugh. He said, 鈥業鈥檓 cooking fish I鈥檝e never seen!鈥� Because during the war when they couldn鈥檛 go out fishing they used to depth charge, the fish come up dead and they used to gather them up and bring them in, you know that was the easy way of doing it. And he said, 鈥業鈥檝e cooked fish I鈥檝e never seen in my life before!鈥�

Another thing people used to do - they used to have Pig Clubs during the war. I know down the back of the Gas Works there were allotments and several men would band together and buy a couple of pigs and then they would contribute towards their upkeep and then when they were killed they would share the meat out. Another thing with allotments, I can remember - when I was a boy I used to have a little truck, a little two wheeled truck and I used to go round and fill it with horse muck. Because there were no lorries, everything was horse and cart. The butcher, the baker, the man who brought the coal, everybody was horse and cart. And I used to go round and get a barrow full of horse muck and sell it to the allotment men for threepence or whatever.

Another thing we used to do too because coal was rationed. Dad and my two brothers and I, we used to go, particularly when there had been floods and there was old bits of tree and that washed down we would take our little truck and a saw and saw up logs of wood and drag them home. In Queen鈥檚 Park there is a place called the 鈥楶addlers鈥�. Near it was Foster鈥檚 Boat House and it was only a few inches deep, all of us in Queen鈥檚 Park we learnt to swim there because it was safe. After the floods big things used to get bottomed, they couldn鈥檛 get any 鈥� so we used to be able to walk in and get them out.

We used to go to the Gas Works in Ford End Road and get coke. You took your own bag and they had a chute and you put your bag and you filled your bag. Whatever size bag you had you filled it. Well my dad had a bag he鈥檇 made himself. He鈥檇 sown about six bags together and it took the whole family to shift it! We used to go down there and put it on the chute and fill it up with coke and it took all of us to get it home. You could have a bag of coke for six pence and I should think we had a couple of hundredweight.

Another thing I remember too during the war, the few vans that were about mostly belonged to the Gas Works, all run on coal gas. They had a big frame on top of them with a big plastic balloon full of gas and all their vans and one or two other vans as well but mostly gas vans used to run around on coal gas. They did look strange, yes. Another thing too about transport I鈥檝e just remembered, all of the buses, all the single decker buses had the seats taken out and then put back round the outside of the bus so that the whole middle of the bus you could get a lot more people standing. You had lots of hangers to hold onto but they had less seats all the way round. Some had buses that you could go from Queen鈥檚 Park to South End Hotel which was about five miles for a penny during the war. We went to the South End Hotel I think for something to do in a way, it was like an adventure.

I remember seeing - they called them Bren gun carriers which was like a open topped tank with a Bren gun on it and they could carry soldiers about. I can remember seeing those going round the town asking people to give for the War Effort. The slogans were Dig for Victory which was to have an allotment, Save for Victory, save money and then there was Collect for the War Effort, collect paper, rags, bottles, tins. They had all sorts of things all the time asking people to, you know to save something, to do something, to give time for something, another big one they had all the time was to 鈥楪ive Blood鈥�. That was one the things that they were asking people to do.

Another thing we used to do too when we were children during the war to help the war effort we used to go round and collect up bottles, tin cans and bones. Bones, yes, meat bones. Bags of bones. And then we used to take them either to Mattins, it was like Steptoe and Son, only worse! His mother used to sit in the yard and she was ever so old and she was just like a bundle of rags and they used to have these great big bins and they used to put the bones in and these bins would be half full of wriggling maggots. When we used to go fishing we used to go back there and get a tin and have a tin of maggots to go fishing with. They used to have piles of clothes, piles of iron, thousands of bottles, oh, it was an Aladdins cave, it really was! Old bikes, old cars you named it he had in there. Joe Mattin, I think he was in the next street to Roise Street. Anyway we used to take them there or there was another one called Fanes in Beckett Street.

But they were always having things to raise money for the war effort. The Women鈥檚 Voluntary Service (WVS) all sort of people, they would do knitting and make things and have raffles and come round with them with a collecting box. People really did, people really did get together, no doubt about it, they really did.

On the radio we used to have Mr. Churchill talking to us, telling us. I can remember on the radio Lord Haw Haw, the chap, the German who used to come and tell us a lot of rubbish. I had personally had a crystal set that I made myself. I couldn鈥檛 afford a crystal so for the crystal I had a piece of coal which worked quite well and my bed, the bed springs were a huge area of little, tiny coiled springs and I had that for the aerial and that was a magnificent aerial. I had a pair of earphones and I could get it really superb and I used to have a hairpin for the cats whisker and twiddle it round and move it over this piece of coal.鈥�

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