大象传媒

They were poor, my Mum and Gran. How did they really manage?
By saving orange peel begged from wealthy mill owners to use as fire lighters. (I tried this last year and they work brilliantly.)

By picking up coal from passing freight trains, and fallen veg and fruit from markets - until they ran out of luxuries such as fruit!

Then there was singing for your supper. 'Sing us a song, Kitty!' said the women to my Mum, when they came out into the back yards and washing-strewn alleys of Accy, to have an evening gossip. She did and they paid her in bread crusts with treacle - a fine treat!

Bedrooms had just a bed, a chair, one hook for clothes (no coat-hangers) and a potty to go under. No carpets downstairs, sawdust which was - amazingly - still their floor covering when I was four in 1961!!

Stew cooked over the fire ... dolly-tub washing ... tin bath baths.

Some of this they told me with a fond smile on their faces. But shivering under the stairs with bombs falling , waiting for the all-clear sirens? they held their hands over their ears if ever they heard the sirens on TV in later years. Recalling those times, they both shuddered and clammed up. Earwigs, fear, no toilet facilities, cold and damp and the terror and the noise.

Fascinating though these snapshots are to the historian in me, I see this happened to real people with real fears and real hunger and real grief and real frustrations at making ends meet. I applaud anyone who lived though it to still smile, and I thank anyone who fought for the freedom I now have. Indeed I do.

HOW DID THE REST OF YOU MAKE ENDS MEET?

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