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Date 23 June 2004

Wartime memories as told to David G. Orr.

Mrs Helen King was born and brought up in Kirriemuir to the age of 26.
She lived at 9 Marywell Brae and remembers her father telling her when war was declared. She was the Dux in P7 and also at Secondary. She graduated in 1943 after going to Dundee University each day by bus during the war – the Dundee terminus was then in Lindsay Street.

She went to school in the South Kirk vestry to be taught Latin and French by Peter Watson, as Webster’s Seminary was in use by the military. She remembers Mr Watson sitting in front of the small gas fire in the church vestry and how the he used to ‘nod off’ in the afternoons.

She was the ‘sosh message lassie’ at age 14 in the Co-operative drapery department and worked up to 9 o’clock in the evening delivering dresses that had been altered. She remembers they were always busiest on the Saturday night before communion.

Her father (Norman Innes) drove a lorry for James MacPherson & Son at £2-7-6d per week. Her father often got rabbits from keepers and farmers in the Glens, and sometimes a hare for hare soup. Her father was born at Keithhall, Inverurie and during the war remembers an egg box with sections full of eggs was sent to them by her granny in Aberdeenshire, by train, to augment the meagre wartime rations. The eggs were then kept in a large glass jar in ‘icing glass’? The eggs kept in this jar for 3-4 months and could be used for baking etc. but could not be boiled. The same arrangement was made for her Aunt Ray and Uncle Alex (a lawyer for the GA insurance firm in Perth).

She also remembers occasions when a chicken was sent by post (plucked and cleaned & wrapped in paper) from her granny.
Her father also grew vegetables in the garden behind the carter’s sheds on Marywell Brae. All that every family could be do to augment the wartime rations was tried.

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