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Rationing and Shortages

Something from which everyone suffered was rationing and shortages, rationing of foodstuffs, clothes, petrol, coal and shortages of almost everything which wasn't actually rationed. The Black Market flourished or so I've been told but to the best of my knowledge my family didn't have anything to do with it!
Despite the rationing of food I have no recollection of ever being hungry, during the depressions in the 1920's and 30's my mother had learnt the hard way how to make the most of almost nothing and to produce tasty, nourishing meals. Of course I shall never know how much of her food she went without to keep me and my father fed!

In those days for all rationed items of food you had to register at a specific shop, my mother registered at a small local grocer on the estate called Uphill's,
it was owned and run by a Mr.Uphill, his wife and daughters. For meat we registered with another small shop on the estate, a butchers called Fletchers.
To collect your rations you had to produce your ration book, the shopkeeper would check that you had coupons for what you wanted and cut them out so that you couldn't use them again and then you got your food. It all used to take rather a long time, goods weren't packaged as they are now so the shopkeeper would have to weigh most things out and put them in paper bags, it was a rather slow process! For some items you were allowed a certain number of points, these were coupons for non-essential things, luxury items if you could find them. You could shop anywhere for these and I clearly remember on one occasion being in Marks and Spencers in North End when a whisper went round the store that a tin of chocolate biscuits was going to be opened! We ran and joined the queue and we were lucky that time but not everyone was!
You couldn't buy just as much as you wanted in those days, everybody was restricted. My mother would buy things with her points whenever she could and save them for special occasions like Christmas, things such as tins of salmon and fruit stick in my mind.

Apart from food all kinds of fuel was either rationed or in short supply as were most things. My father had difficulty some times getting razor blades I remember and he bought one or two gadgets for resharpening them, one I recall was a green glass block with a ground glass surface. Whether it worked or not I don't know!
Torch batteries were another problem, particularly Number Eights, we always seemed to have difficulty finding them.

Many people say that they missed sweets during the war, I suppose that I must have done so too but I don't remember it particularly. There were one or two alternatives, I would buy liquorice root to chew, it resembled dry twigs and when it was chewed it gradually became a yellow, pulpy, fibrous mass. It wasn't for swallowing, just for chewing, probably much healthier than all the sweets and chocolates we have today!
Another substitute was a hard, black liquorice called Spanish, this could be bought at Boot's the chemist, it wasn't rationed because it was medicinal, a laxative I suppose! A throat sweet called Zubes was available I seem to remember but nothing else comes to mind, although I have heard of people buying Ovaltine tablets but I don't think I did.

Things like bananas and oranges were rare but I think that the adults missed them more than the children, we had little memory of the times when these items were commonplace. As I said I don't remember going hungry, we weren't a wealthy family so many of the things which disappeared from the shops were things we wouldn't have had anyway! But the food my mother served up was healthy and I enjoyed it, in fact we were all a lot healthier in those days. We didn't eat as much, sweet stuffs were very limited and the diet very basic, we walked more, (No cars!) and we were fitter.
Certainly at this time there wasn't the wastage of food such as one sees today,
my mother never cooked more than we could eat and empty plates were the order of the day! In commercial premises both large and small there were always bins for leftovers to be used for feeding pigs, the pig swill collection was a fact of life!

In order to augment the food supply everyone was encouraged to grow their own food, the Dig For Victory campaign, we dug up a section of the lawn and I recall lettuces, spring onions, radishes and carrots being planted. However my father wasn't a great gardener and I don't remember great quantities being produced! I recall that at Christmas on one occasion my grandmother who lived in Rochdale sent us a small food parcel, I remember jelly and a small tin of salmon. My mother still made a Christmas cake and pudding but I seem to remember that carrots took the place of the dried fruit of the peacetime years all other goodies had been hoarded for most of the year to ensure as good a Christmas as possible in spite of everything..
But in spite of everything we not only survived but we flourished!

Toys were in short supply and my father bought some secondhand toys from a man where he worked, I believe they were pieces of a Hornby train set, rails etc. and pieces of a Meccano set.

Queues became the order of the day, you queued in the shops, you queued for buses, you queued to get in the cinema, in fact there was almost nothing that you didn't have to queue for! I have heard and it may well be true that if people saw a queue they would join it in case it was something they wanted, but they didn't necessarily know just what they were queuing for!
I believe that people were more patient in those days than they are today, there wasn't really any alternative!
Clothes rationing was another great cause for concern, the limited number of clothing coupons issued meant that you had to be very careful how you used them. Apart from the fact that there were fewer things in the shops you had to plan ahead because there would be no more coupons until next year so impulse buying was out of the question!
Items such as shoes would be mended several times and I can remember quite clearly the shoe repairer calling on his bicycle to collect and return shoes. We managed, as I said before we weren't the most affluent of families so we were not in the habit of buying things we didn't really need and this helped us in this situation.

When I was accepted for Price's Grammar School, in Fareham, I was fitted out with a full uniform. School cap, blazer, regulation grey trousers, grey socks and black shoes, P.T. shorts etc. How my mother managed to find all the coupons for these items I shall never know but somehow she did. Later I needed cricket flannels and boots, but before that I needed football boots. The school organised a sale of second hand boots, these came from boys who had outgrown them, so I had a pair of these, it was the only way to get them, there were none in the shops.

On one occasion my father managed to obtain from a source which I never knew but which was probably in the "fell off the back of a lorry" category, a roll of grey flannel. Dad, being the kind of man he was, decided to make himself a suit. He had no previous experience of tailoring but felt that it couldn't be too difficult, he laboured over this for some weeks and finally finished it. I don't recall great elation when the finished garment was tried on and how many times he wore it I don't know!
Perhaps it was a waste of effort but in those days people would try anything, recycling isn't anything new, it went on all through the war particularly with clothes.

The Effect On My Family

My family was very lucky compared to some in the war, my father was doing essential war work building aircraft and so wasn't called up. However three of my uncles did serve in the Forces, my Uncle Bill was a sergeant in the R.A.F. and spent most of the war in Egypt, Uncle Eric served in the Inns of Court Regiment, an armoured unit, as a sergeant, Uncle Harry spent most of his time in Lord Lovat's Scouts, this was I believe a reconnaissance unit but what they did is something he will not talk about. Both Eric and Harry were involved in the D-Day invasions and as far as I know progressed into Germany eventually. My other uncle, Edward was the manager of a large bakery near Rochdale and this was considered to be essential war work too so he wasn't called up, he did however become captain of the local Home Guard unit.

Throughout the war I didn't see my uncles other than Harry, one day a letter arrived from him in which he said how much he missed visiting us on Friday evenings, arriving at Portchester railway station on the 4.45 pm train. This totally mystified my parents as he had never visited us at any time! However my mother decided that this was a message to get past the censor as soldiers could not say where they were in those days. Anyway we duly went to the station on Friday to meet the 4.45 train, when it arrived he was not on it. We thought that obviously he hadn't been able to come.
When we got home there he was sitting on the back door step! He had caught an earlier train! That was a very good weekend particularly for my mother seeing her younger brother.
I said that my family was lucky, we did not have any member of the family killed or wounded in the war so real tragedy passed us by!

Entertainment

There was little commercially produced entertainment during the war compared with what exists today, there was no television of course so we were very dependant on the radio or wireless as it was then called. News bulletins
were eagerly listened to at eight o'clock in the morning, at one, six and nine in
the rest of the day. I remember that the most popular programme was Itma
with Tommy Handley, Mrs.Mopp, Colonel Chinstrap and Funff. In the early part of the war Bandwagon with Arthur Askey was also a favourite. Hi Gang! with Bebe Daniels, Ben Lyon and Vic Oliver is another that I remember, also Monday Night at Eight and Happidrome featuring Mr.Lovejoy, Ramsbottom and Enoch. Anything with Jack (Mind my bike!) Warner, Elsie and Doris Waters (Gert and Daisy), Charlie Kunz and his piano,George Formby and his ululele were programmes which we enjoyed. These programmes would seem very tame these days but in the war we thoroughly enjoyed and looked forward to them. We didn't have pop star idols but we did have singers, Vera Lynn, Anne Shelton, Hutch, Peter Dawson, Donald Peers, the Western Brothers. Songs that I remember were of course White Cliffs of Dover, Run Rabbit Run, We're Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line, Bless'em all, We'll Meet Again. There were of course many others but these come instantly to mind.
I also remember a programme called Worker's Playtime which was always announced as coming "From somewhere in England", It usually came from a factory producing munitions or aircraft or something for the war effort. The B.B.C. announcers I remember were Alvar Liddell, Bruce Belfrage and
Stuart Hibberd , in those days they were very formal but it was reassuring to hear their measured tones as they told us what was happening. There were also public information programmes such as the Radio Doctor telling people how to stay healthy. The Kitchen Front was another which told you how to make the most of what food was available.

Visual information relating to what was happening in the war was limited to Newsreels such as British Movietone News and newspapers and magazines.
We had as far as I can remember the Portsmouth Evening News on a daily basis and Picture Post and John Bull on a weekly one. The Picture Post always carried really graphic photographs throughout the war, for some reason I particularly remember pictures of the fighting in Russia but I don't know why this should stick in my memory but I remember thinking just how cold everything looked.

Otherwise we made our own amusement at home, cards, board games, hobbies of one sort or another, my father used to make model galleons and repair clocks. I'm sure that there were dances and so on but I was too young to be interested in them.

There were of course restrictions on where you could go, if you wished to go to the beach at Southsea there was only one part which was available. That stretched from the South Parade Pier westwards towards Southsea Castle, the rest of the beaches were fenced with barbed wire. It was possible to swim at Portchester but it wasn't the best beach in the world, large stones, lots of mud and sea grass, but sometimes we went there.

From time to time there would be special fund raising activities, the Spitfire Fund, Aid to Russia, and I believe there was one for Warships also.
Generally these events would feature a parade, the parade would be made up of everyone who had a uniform. Units from the three services would take part if available, the Fire Service, the Red Cross, the Home Guard, Air Raid Wardens, Sea Cadets, anyone in fact who was available! We always looked forward to going to see these parades, it cheered us up I suppose.
On one occasion in Portchester there was a parade which also included people in fancy dress, I remember one young lady who went as "Panic"! She had clothes on which were wrongly buttoned, odd shoes and socks and carried a suitcase which had things hanging out of it, the sleeve of a blouse, a sock, that sort of thing. She didn't win however as the judges felt that panic was not the right sort of attitude!

Wartime personalities

There were people who mattered for one reason or another throughout the war, people whose names were always in the news, There were the good guys and the bad guys! The big number one for our side was of course Winston Churchill, then there was President Roosevelt, Joe Stalin and Chiang Kai Shek, the leaders of America, Russia and China. France had General de Gaulle and
Yugoslavia had Tito. On the other side were Adolph Hitler, Hermann Goering, Himmler, Goebels and Von Ribbentrop, these were the German leaders. In Italy was Mussolini and in Japan Tojo.

We had General Montgomery, General Wavell and the Germans had General Kesselring and General Rommel, the Americans had Generals Eisenhower and Patton. I believe that most youngsters of my age were familiar with these names and who they represented.

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