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

My Dad was a miner, which was a reserved occupation, and we lived in a village in Monmouthshire. He was also an air raid warden. My Mum worked in the munitions factory. The miners had corned beef sandwiches supplied, and we had free coal and carbolic soap. We wore clogs in Wales, and my father used to mend them.
It was a good time in that we spent a lot of time with our families, including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents.
When we bought chips from the shop we had to take our own newspaper to bring them home in. We took basins to bring back ice cream. The milk delivery was by horse and cart, and we took our own jugs out to pour out milk from the churns. At Christmas time we used to make our pudding, then cook it with everyone else’s in a big boiler in the Church hall.
Even during the war we used to go to a Herefordshire farm and a Kent farm each year to pick hops. Dad drove the tractor, Mum had a big ‘cradle’, and we children all had baskets to put the hops in. We then tipped them in to Mum’s ‘cradle.’ We had to climb up, then pull the hops down and scoop them off. We slept on hay in a barn and all enjoyed it. Dad would shoot a rabbit and Mum cooked it.
Children had lots of fun with healthy, home made food.

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