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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Caroline Drodge of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Cliff Maund, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I grew up in Knowbury near Ludlow in Shropshire. There was 2.5 miles between the houses there. We all kept pigs, and the butcher used to come round to kill them for us. At the first houses he would always find something wrong – the bench was the wrong height, the water the wrong temperature – and would be given some cider or beer to drink. He scraped the hair off into a bath . I helped my uncle to salt the pig. We rubbed it with blocks of salt, with saltpetre on the bone joints, until it started to sweat. We took the insides out and hung it on a wooden stick in the back kitchen for a few days. The butcher then came back to cut it up. We had no fridges. We had home made pork pies and faggots, and fried the liver. We salted it again, left it 3 weeks, then repeated it. After a few weeks it was then cured. We hung it from the ceiling on racks and cut bacon off when we wanted it.
We grew vegetables and made butter.
A typical day for my Dad: up at 5pm, lit the fire to boil the kettle for tea. He took a bottle of cold tea to work in the quarry. He had a 2.5 to 3 mile walk to get there. He worked all day, walked home to eat. In the summer he walked a mile or so in the evening to do hay making until 10 – 10.30pm, then walked home.

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